The choice is simple: Kill or be killed.
Wyatt French blasted himself to smithereens with his shotgun. But before he died, he contacted Kimble, a Shipley, Ky., sheriff, and Darmus, a reporter for the Sawyer County Sentinel, and asked them to consider whether he really committed suicide. A strange request, perhaps, but Wyatt was a strange man, who for unspecified reasons built a lighthouse miles away from the sea and even equipped it with ultraviolet beams when his new neighbors at the big-cat rescue center complained that its light upset their animals. In the course of investigating Wyatt’s lair, lights unfortunately get broken and strange things begin to happen. A black puma escapes the compound, a keeper is mauled, a deputy magically gets up and walks away when his car is totaled and an eerie blue glow bobbles through the woods. Even stranger, Wyatt seems to have plastered the walls of the lighthouse with pictures of murderers and accident victims, some dating back to the 1880s, when 16 men died constructing the Whitman trestle nearby. At length, Kimble and Darmus realize their pasts also include fateful accidents that occurred near the trestle. Meanwhile, the big cats grow more restless and the blue light appears more often. The final confrontation will cause Kimble to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Koryta (The Cypress House, 2011, etc.), whose affection for the big cats and those who care for them is contagious, has produced a supernatural thriller that will raise goosebumps the size of golf balls.
