Brent Monahan (1948–2023)

Interesting & unconventional vampire story.

The book is structured such that roughly half is from the point of view of Vincent DeVilbiss (a vampire) & roughly half Simon Penn (a librarian). I tended to prefer the parts that focused on Vincent - partly because I found the vampire lore interesting, partly because I did not like Simon. While Simon's actions did help drive the story along, I found the way that he treated Frederika (a woman caught between the two men) to be quite creepy, so much show more so that I considered giving up on reading the book at certain points. That's not to say that Vincent was perfect, but I found it very hard to root for Simon (despite it seeming that I was supposed to)

The ending got very exciting. However I thought that some of its details came out of nowhere, & felt like a cheap way for the author to get to his desired ending.

Overall, not bad, but I don't plan on seeking out the sequel. show less

This novel describes most of the significant Bell Witch facts as they have come to stand in American history/legend. The author chose the device of an unknown manuscript that gave inside information on the events of nearly 200 years ago, and took on the stance that this was as much a mystery (a murder mystery, no less) as it was a series of possible supernatural events. I didn't find this novel scary, but I don't know if I was supposed to. My own view is that this notorious case of a show more haunting witnessed by hundreds (including Andrew Jackson, if legend is correct) contains some unexplained elements but is also one that has grown in the telling over the decades. No one theory covers all elements here but the one that comes closest involves knowing participation by some of the family involved in the supposed poltergeist phenomena that surrounded them. Whatever else this matter was, it became deadly serious and the patriarch of the family did wind up dead, just as the spirit of the "witch" prophesied. More disturbing, true to her word, the witch did appear and she laughed at him at his funeral, as his casket was being lowered into the grave. I have read quite a bit about this disturbing folk history and have heard everything advocated from demonic presences to straightforward trickery. One recent claim was that the girl at the heart of the case was being molested by her father, that the pranks she claimed were a haunting were a cry for help, and that she got her revenge by poisoning her father to death. That may well be. Whatever the explanations are, the Bell Witch of Tennessee certainly deserves to be kept alive in memory, and it makes for a titillating study of the unexplained.

This was one of the best fiction chillers I have read in a long time. You never can quite tell whether it is fiction or fact. Chilling tale with a good twist at the end. show less

4.5 stars

A well written, surprisingly entertaining fictional telling of The Bell Witch Haunting, a poltergeist which was purportedly well documented during the period between 1818 and 1823. The poltergeist drew notoriety and a future U.S. president with its antics and eventually led to the death of John Bell, the head of the family. Told from Richard Powell's, Betsy Bell's future husband, point of view, the story starts with a curse laid on John Bell by a lady named Kate Batts and quickly show more develops into a story about a young girl and her father tormented by the poltergeist called Old Kate.

The author takes a lot of liberties in his storytelling (and is up front about it on his website), but the basic information conforms to the above Bell Witch site. Looking over the character bios on this site leads me to think that, even given that women did marry early (12 or 13 years old) to men who were often a good deal older (basic economics?), some of the players in the original story were, in fact, just dirty old men. That's the conclusion the author seems to draw any way and I kinda agree. show less

Since 2000, author Brent Monahan has been penning the John Le Brun detective series. The St. Lucia Island Club is the fifth novel, and the latest, novel in the series. If I had realized that when I agreed to review, I’m not sure I would have. However, Monahan does an excellent job creating an environment where the reader did not have read the four previous investigations to enjoy this effort. He did make several references to the first book, which were really unnecessary.

In this episode show more when “retired Southern sheriff-turned-New York City detective John Le Brun and his wife, Lordis, set sail in 1910 for a long-awaited honeymoon on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, they expect to find relaxation in paradise.” They are traveling with another couple, but I don’t think that was their intention. The two couples seem to annoy each other.

Once there, they discover that they have been recruited to take the island’s perks back to their friends in Manhattan as a place they should vacation. The book regales the reader with the lush descriptions of the island’s beauty, decades before it became an international commercial paradise that boasts more than 50 resorts. I loved this aspect of the story, and set against the racial, economic and social tensions of the island, it made for a wonderful dichotomy that many books today don’t have.

Soon after their arrival, Le Brun is invited to join the wealthy planter’s at the Club (not sure why Monahan is fixated on men’s clubs). Then a planter’s family is horribly murdered, in what the guilty parties hope to appear as an accident. It’s a clever murder method that I rarely see used. The writing also has that slow, old-fashioned feel to it. It’s not a page-turner, but a book to be savored, even when the topic is murder.

It’s not hard to figure out who-done-it. And, for what I could gather, this is the first time that our hero allows his wife to help him as much as a female on that island can.

I enjoyed The St. Lucia Island Club and give it 4 out of 5 stars. show less