A Room for the Dead

In this hard hitting and sharp-edged tale of the supernatural, Veteran New Hampshire State Police Detective Sergeant Frank O'Hara pursues a crazed serial killer whose crimes bear the grisly signature of Gary Ledbetter, a vicious murderer arrested by O'Hara and executed years earlier. Definitely not for the faint of heart. Mass market USA Todat Best Seller in 1996. A Literary Guild Alternate Selection in 2005. It refuses to go away. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly The chills come fast and hard in Hynd's latest, a riveting blend of ghost story and police procedural. New Hampshire state cop Frank O'Hara, approaching 50 and close to retirement, is given a case--a young woman is beheaded, her right hand cut off--that duplicates the M.O. of serial killer Gary Ledbetter. But Gary, a "low-rent Lothario" nabbed by O'Hara, was executed months ago in Florida, after political machinations moved the killer to a state with capital punishment. Since then, O'Hara's life has turned to ashes. He's taken seriously to booze, his wife has left him, his partner has committed suicide--and now, deep into another hated winter, something seems to be haunting his house: floors creak, doors slam, an empty rocking chair rocks. A tangle of right-wing state politics, skinhead thieves, a mysterious young woman and, increasingly, dialogues between O'Hara and what seems to be Gary's ghost lead the cop through past police corruption and malfeasance to a shattering conclusion. Throughout, the atmospherics are excellent and the local color first-rate: "There's ten months of winter and two months of bad skiiing. The state animal is the skunk, the state bird is the black fly, the state citizen is the deadbeat, and the state sport is petty larceny." After several spy thrillers, Hynd switched to the occult with his previous novel, Ghosts . This spooky follow-up confirms that he's made the right choice. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Fans of Stephen King, John Saul, Dean Koontz, and the like will give Hynd a thumbs up for his latest shivery ghost story. Detective Frank O'Hara, a New Hampshire cop anticipating early retirement, has to rethink his plans when a case he closed six months earlier comes back to haunt him--literally. Gary Ledbetter was executed for torturing, killing, and dismembering at least five young women up and down the eastern seabord. But now another murder has taken place, and this one has all the grisly trademarks of Gary's particularly gruesome style. Since it was O'Hara's dogged investigation that sent Gary to the electric chair, the detective finds himself assigned to reinvestigate one of the most puzzling and terrifying cases of his career. While Hynd doesn't quite invoke the same level of nightmarish terror as some of his fellow horror writers, he's good at macabre, mind-bending plots with plenty of grotesque details, and he effectively blends the horror and mystery genres.