ECHOES

Complex but absorbing horror novel whose creepy climax hits home. All hell breaks loose in San Paradiso, California, where Laura Bennett is a political reporter on the Paradise Herald. A serial killer of young women is on the loose--and strangely enough the evidence points to Mayor Joe Pickard. But Joe Pickard has been seen in places and doing things he didn't do--is a double impersonating the mayor? What's more, other characters in the novel have doubles tanning about, doubles who are poor carbons of their originals. Laura's having an affair with Judge Lewis Tarkenton, which is not a good idea for a political reporter--especially when Senator Cruise Long dies at a dinner while staring directly at Laura, and the Governor may appoint Tarkenton to fill out the senator's unexpired term. Or will Rita Long be asked to fulfill her husband's term? Rita, who has a tacky background as an actress, has just received some blackmail photos of herself (or a double) in bed with some young men--a sexcapade she has no memory of. Laura, meanwhile, pursues memories of her late father, a painter who died mad after copying Goya's The Witches Sabbath at the Prado. In his letters he'd told of a door appearing in his copy and of the painting's figures slowly turning toward the opening door. What is Laura's tie to the opening door? Around the world, famine and earthquakes are topped by the mass kidnapping of the world's top leaders. And how does Laura's boss, her editor Greg, seem to know beforehand everything Laura knows? Well, it seems the Seventh Seal of Revelation is Goya's opening door, and that the evil doubles (echoes) in every person are being loosed on earth via Laura in San Paradiso. And WHOOSH! here they come. . . Nice job, tastefully slimy, with large nods toward Goya at his darkest.