The 13th

Award-winning author Everson's latest novel fails to live up to the reputation that two Bram Stoker Awards earned him. Twenty-five years after a bloody massacre, the Castle House Lodge has reopened as an asylum, with an unusual group of patients. Dr. Barry Rockford, a controversial MIT geneticist, has recruited some local thugs to abduct young women. Early on, the reader learns that Rockford's experiments involve impregnating his captives as part of a Satanic ritual. His activities initially fly beneath the radar, until new Castle Point Police Officer Christy Sorensen learns that a neighboring jurisdiction has experienced a rash of disappearances. Sorensen's inquiries lead her to the amateur sleuthing of bicyclist David Shale, who earns himself a job at the asylum as a handyman. At times Everson's prose is so over the top it's laughable, but it's the stock characters and situations that sink this average novel.