The Burn Palace
Award-winning poet and veteran novelist Dobyns, who also pens the Charlie Bradshaw mystery series, sets his latest thriller in Brewster, Rhode Island, a small town beset by a series of strange occurrences that may be supernatural in nature. Detective Woody Potter has been wracked by emotional turmoil ever since his girlfriend left him. But he knows he’s in for an even rougher patch on the job when he’s called to the hospital in the middle of the night. Someone has stolen a newborn baby and left a huge red-and-yellow snake in the infant’s crib. Then the scalped corpse of an insurance investigator turns up in a parking lot. Throw in a local Wiccan sect, some out-of-control coyotes, and an unemployed plumber who has taken to growling at people, and you have a recipe for small-town hysteria. Dobyns peoples this literary chiller with a fully rounded cast of memorable characters, from an eerily self-possessed 10-year-old with an unusual gift to an opera-loving policeman who secretly longs to be a set designer. Expertly paced and smoothly written, this should appeal to both thriller and horror fans. --Joanne Wilkinson