Friday, February 15, 2008

Fangland by John Marks


Fangland
John Marks
Penguin Books
January 29, 2008
ISBN# 978-0-14-311253-2

As an associate producer for the television news show, ‘The Hour’, Evangeline Harker is given the job of traveling to Romania to meet with an Eastern European criminal figure, Ion Torgu. Soon after her arrival Evangeline mysteriously disappears with little trace. Her associates believe her dead, but her father and the fiancé she left behind hold on to the hope that evidence will be found to the contrary.

Back at the offices in New York, accusations fly over who’s to blame for sending the young unaccompanied Evangeline to what may have been her death. As one of the staff is fired, another dies of an unexplained virus, one suffers from guilt, and a growing darkness descends on those working on the show.

The discovery of Evangeline in a Transylvanian monastery comes as both a shock and relief to those who care about her and she’s soon reunited with her family and coworkers. Trailing further death and destruction in her wake, Evangeline’s perception of right and wrong has shifted. The barriers between the living and the dead are dissolving, and there may be no one left to save them.

Fangland is an unnervingly creepy story that’s telling is pieced together from personal emails, journals and other surviving notes from the staff of ‘The Hour’. When Evangeline Harker left for Romania she was a happily engaged woman looking forward to a bright future, but the woman who returned was darkness personified. They say that authors should write what they know, and this author has done just that. By using his experience at a television news show to form the backbone of his story, Mr. Marks lends a sense of reality to an otherwise dark vampire tale. The well-built plot and wonderful detail will leave a lasting impression, and the realistic setting may leave readers jumping at shadows.

Kimberly Swan, Darque Reviews

2 comments:

Wendy said...

Oooh, this one sounds GOOD. I really like the cover!

Kimberly Swan said...

Very different, very creepy and very cool cover. lol :)