The Reckoning

June 15, 2015
Whether working in the atmospheric regional mode of James Lee Burke, the modern horror vein of Stephen King, the sardonic gangster idiom of Carl Hiaasen, or the supernatural traditions of H.P. Lovecraft and Bram Stoker, Stroud can be a great storyteller, as shown in this sprawling, sometimes confusing conclusion to his Niceville trilogy. Aided by Niceville native Lemon Featherlight, an expert on local history and legends, Det. Nick Kavanaugh pursues a relentless killer who’s driven by something evil that haunts the Southern town (in an unnamed state). Meanwhile, Nick’s lawyer wife, Kate, does what she can to save her and Nick’s foster son, Rainey Teague, from whatever possesses him. A huge cast of characters—some of them vivid, others indistinguishable—must contend with such threats as zombies, demons, and an annoying Chihuahua. General tightening and the removal of several superfluous subplots would have made this a better book. Those who haven’t read 2012’s Niceville and 2013’s The Homecoming are advised to do so first. Agent: Barney Karpfinger, Karpfinger Agency.

June 15, 2015
Stroud wraps up his peculiar Deep South crime trilogy with a host of made men, undead men, evil spirits, and cops trying as hard as the author to hold everything together. The third book set in the ironically named town of Niceville (Niceville, 2012; The Homecoming, 2013) opens with the police redoubling their efforts to purge the ghosts of the plantation-owning Teague family, which have sown demonic chaos locally. Rainey Teague, a 14-year-old boy seemingly recovered from possession at the end of the previous novel, has taken refuge with the family of Detective Nick Kavanaugh, but Rainey's tossing a young boy in a river suggests all's not well. Nick, meanwhile, has his hands full with a gruesome and inexplicable mass murder of a family, and ex-officer Charles Danziger has re-emerged from his apparent death to journey to the plantation where all this supernatural horror started. To that Stroud adds a subplot involving another cop dealing with mobsters in Florida and one mobster's widow, Delores, using every cliched feminine wile available to manipulate an FBI agent. Stroud's kitchen-sink approach to plotting is almost admirably audacious, weaving in Mario Puzo, Anne Rice, and Stephen King. But the novel has the effect of random pages from each of those authors shuffled together. There are intermittent well-turned smaller scenes-Nick's wife, Kate, confiding in their housekeeper, or Delores doting over her irksome, flatulent Chihuahua. But the overarching plot is busy and convoluted, never successfully meshing real-world bloodshed with Southern Gothic mysticism. "Maybe some kind of horrible bad evil but totally invisible demonic wasp cloud of mind-warping free-floating crazy is flying around Niceville and it drills into people's skulls and turns them into sadistic psychokiller zombies?" a character jokingly asks. Stroud's not joking, alas, but the story lacks the B-movie campiness such a setup deserves. Clunky closure for a series that's taken on too much ballast.

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