Night Relics

by James P. Blaylock

Overview

From the dark imagination of James P. Blaylock comes a new, chilling tale of the supernatural.

When Peter Travers moves into an old house in a remote canyon to try to separate himself from his old existence, his wish becomes reality... all too literally. For his wife and son vanish and the people of the idyllic rural town begin to relive the horrors of a nightmarish crime committed one windy autumn, sixty years earlier. Against a backdrop of murder and midnight terror, Peter must contend with the abandoned relics of his own past before he can overcome the dark forces that haunt the canyon and the people he loves.

REVIEWS:
“Night Relics is a first rate tale of the supernatural with well drawn characters and plenty of shivery moments” -- Dean Koontz

“Superb characters and setting, in a plot that meshes seamlessly...” -- Kirkus Reviews

“[NIGHT RELICS] ... is marked by good prose, believable dialogue and fine description...” -- Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936535682
Publisher:	JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Publication date:	07/24/2012
Series:	Ghosts Trilogy , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	350
File size:	623 KB

About the Author

James P. Blaylock was mentored by Philip K. Dick, along with K.W. Jeter and Tim Powers, and is regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern steampunk. Winner of two World Fantasy Awards and a Philip K. Dick Award, he is director of the Creative Writing Conservatory at the Orange County School of the Arts and a professor at Chapman University, where he has taught for 20 years.

Editorial Reviews

Blaylock's characters are subjected to the visitations of unquiet spirits and otherwise frightening events in this good but uneven first ghost-story offering from this award-winning fantasy novelist ( Lord Kelvin's Machine ). Seventy years ago in southwest California, Dr. Landry killed his wife's lover when he found them together; she then flung herself and her illegitimate son over a nearby cliff. Dr. Landry disappeared. Unaware of the bloody murder, architectural draftsman Peter Travers now lives in the Landrys' old cabin. When his ex-wife Amanda and their son David disappear just before the two are to go on a vacation to Hawaii, Travers's anguish is exacerbated by the appearance of ghostly apparitions, some of whom seem to be Amanda and David, while others are the figures of those involved in the earlier tragedy. Also plagued by spectral visitations are Lance Klein, a real estate developer with a shady past and Bernard Pomeroy, a deeply disturbed salesman with an eye for blackmail. While the tale is marked by good prose, believable dialogue and fine description, the plot soon wears thin. Travers's search for Amanda and David is almost totally eclipsed by the machinations of Pomeroy and his interplay with Klein, and the ghostly visions never produce the frisson of horror that this genre requires. ( Mar .)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A ghostly wind blows across the valleys of Southern California, scattering pieces of a long-forgotten story of murder and revenge across the lives of a group of people whose own struggles resonate to the tale's dark music. The author of The Paper Grail (Ace: Berkeley, 1992) invests a complex story of failed marriages and shady business deals with mythic overtones as elusive as the eerie wind that forms the primary motif of this hauntingly moody novel. Gracefully written and splendidly told, this is a strong candidate for fantasy and general fiction collections.

Library Journal

Peter and Beth are still struggling to define their relationship when his ex-wife and son, instead of going to Hawaii, mysteriously disappear. While trying to find them, Peter hears of a woman and boy who apparently leaped from a cliff to their deaths--but whose bodies can't be found. Besides these predicaments, an odious character named Pomeroy is trying, as part of a mysterious real estate scam, to force people out of their homes in the Southern California canyon country where Peter lives. These threads come together during a single weekend as Pomeroy's loathsome tactics are linked to his employer, Beth's next door neighbor Klein; one of Pomeroy's victims apparently is connected to the mystery woman and boy; Pomeroy descends into psychopathic violence; and Klein, Beth, and Peter must each combat the uncanny forces threatening them and their loved ones. The unraveling of the plot's circumstances connects Blaylock's protagonists with a generations-old misery as he masterfully employs the night and the wind to conjure the eerie and terrifying menace threatening their hitherto mundane lives.

Dennis Winters