Jonathan Maberry Ghost Road Blues

Jonathan Maberry, Ghost Road Blues is the kind of masterful writing that should win awards. I believed in the characters and now I care about what is going to happen to them. That doesn't happen unless the writing is really top flight. Ghost Road Blues is a new classic.

For a first time novelist, Jonathan Maberry's Ghost Road Blues is pretty amazing. It reads like Stephen King or Peter Straub -lots of scares and a sense of authority in the storytelling you just don't see with beginners. Also, there are a couple of great fight scenes.

Ghost Road Blues

Jonathan Maberry

Pinnacle, June 2006, $6.99, 486 pp.

ISBN 0786018151

Pine Deep is a small Pennsylvania town that looks quaint and bucolic but great evil resides there and thirty ago, when the blight hit the crops, a serial killer went on a rampage killing many people before he was stopped. The killer Ubel Griswell a man more or less mortal was stopped by the Bone Man who kills him in a dark swampy area where evil flourishes. Walking back to town with blood on his clothing, a bunch of rednecks think he was the killer so they murder him.

In the present the blight is back and evil is once again getting ready to rise from the dead. Ubel is stronger and changed from three decades before and he has acolytes who have been waiting for him to rise. After stealing a lot of cocaine and money, mass murderer Karl Ruger crashes his car into a cornfield in Pine Deep. He forces the Guthrie family to do what he wants if they want stay alive. Crow, who is in love with Val Guthrie, is destined to fight Ruger who comes under the domination of Ubel because the evil one has a score to settle with the former police officer. No matter who loses the battle, the war is far from over and will be continued next year in the sequel, DEAD MAN'S SONG.

It is hard to believe this is Jonathan Maberry's debut novel because his writing as of high caliber and is storyline is comparable to that of a master of writer of the horror. There are many supernatural elements in GHOST ROAD BLUES yet in many ways this book reads more like a thriller, setting to stage for the supernatural battle in the sequel. Great action scenes, a growing sense of foreboding and fine characterizations make this a one sitting reading experience though waiting for the ultimate climax is difficult.

Harriet Klausner