Ash
*Starred Review* Before you horror-flick fans get too excited, no, this is not a book about Ash, Bruce Campbell’s iconic cult hero from the Evil Dead movies. It is, however, a big, thrilling, pull-all-the-stops novel featuring David Ash, the skeptical psychic investigator who was introduced in Haunted (1988) and made his second appearance in The Ghosts of Sleath (1994). It’s been awhile since fans have seen Ash, but they’ll be pleased to note that he’s lost none of his straight-shooting attitude and keen ability to distinguish between fear and paranoia and genuine otherworldly goings-on. The book, which finds Ash hired by a secretive organization to investigate the suspected haunting of a sanatorium with some very special residents, begins with a famous celebrity death (the celebrity isn’t named, but the date is the giveaway) and ends with a certain royal personage uttering some very uncharacteristically coarse words. In between, there are plenty of surprises, including the solution to at least one famously unsolved disappearance that has haunted the world since the mid-1970s. Longer than both the earlier Ash novels combined, the book justifies its page count by offering a gripping mixture of paranormal and traditional thriller elements. Imagine Herbert channeling Dan Brown and you’ll have some idea of what he’s up to here. --David Pitt