Review: CLAN
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 2, 2013
At the end of this novel Harry Shannon writes….“I’d like to think CLAN can stand on its own as a book solely designed to twist your knickers.” Well Harry I have been walking very oddly since I finished your traumatic novel…. Many thanks.This was originally published in hard back format in 2003 under a different title but to name that would ruin the experience of this revised version which retains the theme of the original. Several apparently disjointed episodes start the saga which begins with a quotation from H.H. Munro (Saki) the reason for this becomes apparent at novel’s end.The Prologue tells of a trapper in Wyoming in the Winter of 1881 who frantically drives his mule team towards a distant fire as darkness gathers and a howling wolf pack gets ever closer.  He reaches the source of the fire inside a sheltering cave and shares food and coffee with its elderly occupant THEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE !The scene changes to modern LA where a Joe, a veteran Homicide detective makes a ghastly discovery which leads him to alcoholism, quitting the force, then pulling himself together a year later. Now we encounter Kelly in LA, a well paid movie worker who is instructed by her boss to deliver a large package to a man in a casino at Lake Tahoe. Boss leaves for a French Film Festival and Kelly gets Selma, the new receptionist, to make the delivery as she has a hot date.Scene shifts to a Nevada desert highway where Selma is in a hire car with her lover Bobby Lawford en-route to Utah, bound for a life of wealth. Both being tired they divert to a dirt road leading to a motel in the small town of Salt Lick Nevada, book in, and in the best Robert Bloch style vanish….. Fear Ye not this book beats “Psycho” this is no Bates Motel.Joe’s sister visits him worried that Bobby, her errant drunken husband has not come home, and begs him to find him. Kelly is looking for the missing Selma and package and encounters ex detective Joe. Thus they team up and track those they seek and the package to a motel in the small town of Salt Lick.Thus is the scene set for a genuine hair-raising thriller. Salt Lick has a very dark secret and The predacious Others make the wicked biker gang and Russian Mafia hired assassin pair we encounter like Girl Scouts.As the story progresses you Dear Readers will gradually learn more about those Others and even hunt with some in search of “meat”. You will even learn what was in the package that started all the troubles.I will say no more in that direction.Tension builds reaching crescendos at the Bikers invade the town and briefly regret it. On we go to a final confrontation in a remote cabin between Joe, Kelly and unexpected allies against the Others and the Mafia killers which left even this veteran of horror tales shaken.  At last we learn the whole truth about the fates of Selma, Bobby, and a couple of very obnoxious tourists.Happy endings ?  BUY THE BOOK Oh Best Beloved. But only if you are not squeamish, scare easily, or suffer from  nightmares.