Romeo Spikes

A creepy opening distinguishes screenwriter Reay’s promising supernatural thriller, the first in a projected trilogy. Morphic Fields Penitentiary in Louisiana houses an extremely unusual inmate, neurophysicist Agnus Day, who once specialized in the study of telomeres, molecular threads within cells that “control how long we live.” After his daughter died from a brain tumor, Day went insane and disappeared, only to be found at the scene of a horrific crime in a catatonic coma. That trauma reawakened Day’s Geschwind syndrome, which causes the sufferer to be overwhelmed by “violent, inhuman visions” that compel him to write compulsively on any available surface. Day’s condition proves to be connected with the Tormenta, demons that assume human form. A human vigilante force called the Chiro Scuro protects people from the Tormenta. Despite the formulaic struggles between the Chior Scuro and the Tormenta that fill much of the book, readers will be curious to see where Reay takes the story in volume two. (Aug.)