Ash Wednesday

Williamson's second novel (and first hardcover) is a thoughtful horror story about what happens to people when they are forced to gaze into the face of death and, specifically, the face of their dead: their friends and family, thought gone, now returned. Williamson's ironically named town of Merridale suddenly finds its houses and streets teeming with the unmoving ghostly blue images of those who have died. Murders are revealed, rapes and other crimes. People despair, and try to create new lives out of the wreckage. Two of these are Bradley Meyers, a vet already driven half-crazy by his experiences in Vietnam, confronted by the sight of his dead son, and now barely capable of containing his rage, and Jim Callender, whose son has died in the same accident, for which he is partly responsible. As Callender sinks into guilt, Meyers moves toward murder. The book picks up needed momentum in the last half. (February 16)