Robert Wayne McCoy, The King of Ice Cream

The King of Ice Cream

Robert Wayne McCoy

Five Star, Sept 2004, $25.95, 409 pp.

ISBN 1594141487

When Luke Yeager returns to college in Mill Run, Kentucky, he notices changes have come to the town with two new malls, one of which houses Ice Cream Dreams. Luke senses something evil about the store and the men who run it and does his best to avoid it. People who eat the strawberry ice cream change, subtly at first, until they turn totally to embrace the dark. Luke knows these things because he is a Paladin, an order sworn to fight the demons and fallen angels that prey upon mankind.

Mill Run is the place where the second fall of angels plans to make their stand, seducing most of the town into obeying them. This is a special place where the oldest cathedral in America was built; a site where the leader of the fallen angels rests and waits for his minions to do the necessary work that will awaken him so they can proceed with their plan; if successful they hope to reunite with God in heaven.

From the very beginning readers know that there is something wrong with the town. Places on campus are closed to man and nobody is seen entering or leaving those closed rooms. An orange fog permeates the town but the majority of the townsfolk pay no attention to it. The smell of strawberry permeates the area, a sign of evil that is on its way. Robert Wayne McCoy has written an apocalyptical thriller that is spellbinding, enthralling and memorable, a work that uses archetypes from the Judeo-Christian system, but could just as easily have used them from any religion where the forces of good and evil fight the eternal battle.

Harriet Klausner