James Kidman Black Fire

Black Fire

James Kidman

Cemetery Dance, 2004, $40.00

ISBN: 1587671069

In Black Hills, Pennsylvania, seven years ago, eighteen year old high school student Eddie Farris killed his abusive father, a prison guard, in what the teen later called The Showdown. Eddie has since become a macabre caricature of a bogeyman; everybody talks about him in a ghoulish way. The isolation started with his girlfriend Rachel fleeing Black Hills right after the lethal Showdown.

Still, over the next seven years the lonely Eddie tries to overcome the Showdown mental aftermath by following his psychiatrist's advice to write it down; though that has not proven a total catharsis, it helps. Eddie constantly wonders if things would have been different if his younger sister Mary did not die when she was four in an accident, but also believes his dad accidentally killed her during one of his abuser moments.

After seven years away, Rachel returns home accompanied by her son, Eddie's child, that no one bothered to tell him about. She claims that his father is harassing her with increasingly threatening phone calls, but Eddie killed his sire in the Showdown or did he? He notices someone in the shadows stalking him, taunting him, threatening him.

BLACK FIRE is a terrific tale that keeps the audience guessing whether Eddie finally lost his tenuous grip on sanity, is being set up by others to lose his mind, or his dead dad dancing from the cemetery. Thus, readers will consistently consider between psychological suspense and horror, as James Kidman slowly delivers clues then and now by rotating between the present and the Showdown. Strong thriller starring an intriguing individual, who at best has crossed the line between rational thinking and insanity, as his past catches up to him now, perhaps with something evil from beyond.