Inside a Haunted Mind
K. Patrick Malone
A Better Be Write Publishing LLC
ISBN: 978-0978898502
2007

Life has not gone quite according to plan for Terry Chagford, always close but never quite there.  He was picked for the U.S. Olympics team in 1980 only for the U.S. to boycott the Moscow games, then finished 3rd four years later when his form had slipped.  He tried to join the FBI, but failed in his attempt and joined the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. 

Just as his self-esteem was recovering from his FBI "failure" an injury causes him to retire from the ATF.  And so, through his father's connections, he became a police officer in his hometown.  Never quite where he wants to be.  Move forward a few years and Terry is now a forty-something small-town Chief of Police.  He's also an alcoholic suffering from depression.

One night he discovers a road accident and drags the occupant from the vehicle before it sinks into the river.  The survivor, Martin Welliver, soon recovers from his injuries and decides to stay and settle down, buying a house on the outskirts of town, hoping a peaceful life in the semi-urban, semi-rural small town world will have a settling effect on the troubled psyche of a 9-11 survivor.

The house, though, has other plans; Welliver has awakened the spirit of its serial killer former inhabitant.  Now the two men must attempt to overcome their own internal demons to battle an all-too-real external one.

This book sounds pretty second-hand in terms of plot, characters, location etc.  Even the format, as a kind of journal told by Chagford, has been used before many times.  But for all its lack of originality the book reads well and even manages to have, in the police chief, a character it is very easy to sympathize with.  He has had all the things he wanted taken away from him, whether by Cold War political posturing or accidents, and it is easy to see why he is dark and empty inside.  The author has written this character in such a way that you long for him to overcome his problems and become the hero he's always wanted to be.

The two timelines in the book also add one interesting aspect.  In the present day we follow the hollow man Chagford has become.  But you also get to see how this happened with the other, gradually converging timeline showing you his declining mental state.

This is quite an atmospheric story.  Despite the seeming familiarity of the plot, monster and setting there is a dread feeling pervading the present-day story line, and the next twist is not as predictable as the synopsis above might suggest.  In fact, in some ways, the been-there-before aspect of the book actually works in the story's favor.  The reader fills in some of the detail that we expect to be there without extra detail slowing down the prose.  This was a pleasantly surprising book; far better than first impressions suggest it has the right to be.

-- I. E. Lester