Douglas Wynne
Author of The Devil of Echo Lake
About the Author
Image credit: Photo by Jen Salt
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Works by Douglas Wynne
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- Legal name
- Douglas Wynne
- Gender
- male
- Organizations
- Horror Writers Association
International Thriller Writers - Short biography
- DOUGLAS WYNNE wrote his first dark fantasy novel at the age of fifteen but took a creative detour soon after to spend the next decade writing songs and singing in rock bands. After earning his BA in Music Production and Engineering at Berklee College of Music and working a short stint as a recording engineer in Woodstock, NY, he came full circle back to fiction writing and is recently the author of five novels: The Devil of Echo Lake, Steel Breeze, and the SPECTRA Files trilogy (Red Equinox, Black January, and Cthulhu Blues). His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, and his writing workshops have been featured at genre conventions and other venues throughout New England. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and son and a houseful of animals.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Rockville Center, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, USA
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Reviews
Wynne’s mystical murder mystery is short at a 118 pages, efficient, and certainly surprised me by its ending. But it’s an ending he laid the groundwork for and is convincing in terms of the book’s premise.
It’s New York City in 1991, and our narrator is Miles Landry, another one of those angry private eyes who isn’t earning much money as the sole owner and employee of Insight Detective Agency. It was founded by Landry and an ex-Army buddy who ended up eating his gun after founding show more it. Landry continues to eke out a living in Chinatown. Between court-ordered anger management classes and grieving a dead fiancé who died Landry was deployed, he doesn’t have a lot going on in his life.
We open with Landry getting thrashed in in his office by a Chinese woman, an expert in karate upset by his photos of her in a divorce case.
A call interrupts things. It’s from Geshe Norbu, a monk at the local Diamond Path Dharma Center. Its leader, Jigme Rinpoche, wants to hire Landry for missing person case that has connections to the Chinatown Monster. That’s the name given to a series of recent murders involving extreme mutilation of the victims.
Showing up at the Center, things get weirder. Rinpoche wants Landry to find a dead man, a former student of his, Dorje Tsering. And Dorje died back in China in 1961.
And he thinks Dorje has been reincarnated. And is the Chinatown Monster.
Under that religion there are many practices, tantras (yes, tantric sex is mentioned), to achieve enlightenment. You can try to counter emotions like lust and anger. Or, there’s a quicker way. You can embrace those emotions by meditating on a “wrathful emanation” of Buddha: Yamantaka, Lord of Death. That’s what Dorje did. Or, at least, started to before stopping to fight the invading Chinese.
And we’re off on an investigation that will see Landry brawling with Chinese gangsters, fending off hostile NYPD detectives – including an old Army buddy of his — not happy with Landry interfering with their investigation into the Monster, a beautiful graduate student, and a Chinese plot to kill the visiting Dalai Lama.
I like stories that take the metaphysics and morals of a religion seriously (though most of the examples I can think of come from film). That’s what Wynne, a student of Vajrayana Buddhism, does here, and he doesn’t present anything that contradicts my slender knowledge of Tibet Buddhism or Tibet itself.
Definitely recommended if you want a different sort of private eye story. show less
It’s New York City in 1991, and our narrator is Miles Landry, another one of those angry private eyes who isn’t earning much money as the sole owner and employee of Insight Detective Agency. It was founded by Landry and an ex-Army buddy who ended up eating his gun after founding show more it. Landry continues to eke out a living in Chinatown. Between court-ordered anger management classes and grieving a dead fiancé who died Landry was deployed, he doesn’t have a lot going on in his life.
We open with Landry getting thrashed in in his office by a Chinese woman, an expert in karate upset by his photos of her in a divorce case.
A call interrupts things. It’s from Geshe Norbu, a monk at the local Diamond Path Dharma Center. Its leader, Jigme Rinpoche, wants to hire Landry for missing person case that has connections to the Chinatown Monster. That’s the name given to a series of recent murders involving extreme mutilation of the victims.
Showing up at the Center, things get weirder. Rinpoche wants Landry to find a dead man, a former student of his, Dorje Tsering. And Dorje died back in China in 1961.
And he thinks Dorje has been reincarnated. And is the Chinatown Monster.
Under that religion there are many practices, tantras (yes, tantric sex is mentioned), to achieve enlightenment. You can try to counter emotions like lust and anger. Or, there’s a quicker way. You can embrace those emotions by meditating on a “wrathful emanation” of Buddha: Yamantaka, Lord of Death. That’s what Dorje did. Or, at least, started to before stopping to fight the invading Chinese.
And we’re off on an investigation that will see Landry brawling with Chinese gangsters, fending off hostile NYPD detectives – including an old Army buddy of his — not happy with Landry interfering with their investigation into the Monster, a beautiful graduate student, and a Chinese plot to kill the visiting Dalai Lama.
I like stories that take the metaphysics and morals of a religion seriously (though most of the examples I can think of come from film). That’s what Wynne, a student of Vajrayana Buddhism, does here, and he doesn’t present anything that contradicts my slender knowledge of Tibet Buddhism or Tibet itself.
Definitely recommended if you want a different sort of private eye story. show less
Readers. About the best an author can hope from them is that they read your stuff and pay for it. But, every once in a while, they have other uses.
Such was the case with Mat Fizsimmons. He not only sent Wynne a bunch of nice black-and-white artwork of the various entities, magical relics, and talismans of Wynne’s SPECTRA trilogy but suggested a story too. What if SPECTRA became involved with the notorious Jack Parsons?
In case that notoriety hasn’t reached you, Parsons was a chemist, show more rocket scientist, occultist, developer of crucial military hardware for the U.S. government in WWII, and an associate of L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley. As one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he even has a crater on the moon named after him.
But Parsons, in the opening chapter, isn’t working on rockets. He and a dodgy character we’ll come to know as Kamen Abdelmalek, a CalTech mathematics student from Iraq and member of the Church of Starry Wisdom, are driving a man insane with a chemical concoction of Parsons designed to induce visions of extradimensional entities.
We then shift to someone who provides the book more interest than Parsons himself, a character of particular interest to those who have read Wynne’s SPECTRA trilogy: Catherine Littlefield, the occult scholar and grandmother of Becca Phillips.
In December 1948, Littlefield is a nineteen-year-old anthropology student at Banard College in New York City. She’s already obsessed with secret societies.
She finds some solace and interest in an odd place: in front of the Willamette Meteorite exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. It gives off an odd hum that only she seems to be able to hear.
Well, at least until Walter Hildebrand shows up. He’s the curator of the museum’s Hall of Minerals and Gems. He hears the hum too and notes Catherine never touches the stone. He gives her a history of the object and urges her to touch it. When she does, she senses disturbing psychic emanations from it. Hildebrand offers to teach how to strengthen her psychic armor.
It’s all a bit much for even Catherine who bolts.
But she suspects Hildebrand is a member of the Order of the Golden Bough and keeps him under surveillance. One night in December, he goes to Central Park. There, with other masked men, he performs a ritual whose symbology, even at this point in her studies, Catherine recognizes. When things look to be progressing to human sacrifice, she impulsively intervenes and finds herself initiated at sword point, in a “blind marriage”, into the Order.
It all turns out to be a recruitment. Cleopatra’s Needle, the obelisk in Central Park, may have the Fire of Cairo in it somewhere. That’s the magical weapon that features in the SPECTRA trilogy. Also, beneath the obelisk is a lead box. Both items were concealed there by Henry Hurlbolt Gorringe, Freemason and member of the Order of the Golden Bough and, possibly, killed by the order’s enemy, the Starry Wisdom Church.
Hildebrand’s group has gotten reports that Parsons has been dabbling in sex magic and has the Black Pharaoh’s mirror, provided by Kamen, that provides communication with some of the Great Old Ones. The government has Parsons under surveillance for communist affiliations, and the order has gotten information from various prostitutes about Parsons’ rites. Hildebrand wants Catherine to go to California. Parsons, given his recent success with a female medium and artist, has a thing for redheads like Catherine.
She’s not, Hildebrand quickly adds, to prostitute herself out to Parsons. The order wants to know if the Starry Wisdom and Parsons have a book stolen from Gorringe: The Mortiferum Indicium. It’s a manuscript that instructs how to use the Fire of Cairo when the Church of Starry Wisdom finally attempts to raise Cthulhu.
In California, Catherine, under the guise of a naïve seeker of wisdom and given to visions, inveigles her way into Parsons’ and Kamen’s household where she’ll see a rite of sex magic where Salome, member of Starry Wisdom, seems to merge with some extradimensional creature.
We’ll also meet Whittaker and LeBlanc, two SPEAR agents. That’s Special Physics Exploration And Research, the previous incarnation of SPECTRA. They have Parsons under surveillance, and their ham-handed efforts blow Catherine’s cover.
It all comes to a climax on the summer solstice with a magical rite – Parsons providing a rocket and custom chemicals to go with inhuman chants – in the desert.
Except it doesn’t end there. As befitting an espionage tale, we finish with a surprising revelation.
Wynne does a good job with the psychological enigma of Parsons. As with the SPECTRA books, he provides some believable motivations for wishing to open the door to the Crawling Chaos coming to earth. Readers of the SPECTRA series will be happy to have Catherine on-stage, but, like me, they will probably wish we to learned even more about her.
There are a couple more SPECTRA tales from Wynne, so we’ll see what they have. For now, this 169-page book was another enjoyable foray into Wynne’s world, especially with Fitzsimmons’ art included. show less
Such was the case with Mat Fizsimmons. He not only sent Wynne a bunch of nice black-and-white artwork of the various entities, magical relics, and talismans of Wynne’s SPECTRA trilogy but suggested a story too. What if SPECTRA became involved with the notorious Jack Parsons?
In case that notoriety hasn’t reached you, Parsons was a chemist, show more rocket scientist, occultist, developer of crucial military hardware for the U.S. government in WWII, and an associate of L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley. As one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he even has a crater on the moon named after him.
But Parsons, in the opening chapter, isn’t working on rockets. He and a dodgy character we’ll come to know as Kamen Abdelmalek, a CalTech mathematics student from Iraq and member of the Church of Starry Wisdom, are driving a man insane with a chemical concoction of Parsons designed to induce visions of extradimensional entities.
We then shift to someone who provides the book more interest than Parsons himself, a character of particular interest to those who have read Wynne’s SPECTRA trilogy: Catherine Littlefield, the occult scholar and grandmother of Becca Phillips.
In December 1948, Littlefield is a nineteen-year-old anthropology student at Banard College in New York City. She’s already obsessed with secret societies.
She finds some solace and interest in an odd place: in front of the Willamette Meteorite exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. It gives off an odd hum that only she seems to be able to hear.
Well, at least until Walter Hildebrand shows up. He’s the curator of the museum’s Hall of Minerals and Gems. He hears the hum too and notes Catherine never touches the stone. He gives her a history of the object and urges her to touch it. When she does, she senses disturbing psychic emanations from it. Hildebrand offers to teach how to strengthen her psychic armor.
It’s all a bit much for even Catherine who bolts.
But she suspects Hildebrand is a member of the Order of the Golden Bough and keeps him under surveillance. One night in December, he goes to Central Park. There, with other masked men, he performs a ritual whose symbology, even at this point in her studies, Catherine recognizes. When things look to be progressing to human sacrifice, she impulsively intervenes and finds herself initiated at sword point, in a “blind marriage”, into the Order.
It all turns out to be a recruitment. Cleopatra’s Needle, the obelisk in Central Park, may have the Fire of Cairo in it somewhere. That’s the magical weapon that features in the SPECTRA trilogy. Also, beneath the obelisk is a lead box. Both items were concealed there by Henry Hurlbolt Gorringe, Freemason and member of the Order of the Golden Bough and, possibly, killed by the order’s enemy, the Starry Wisdom Church.
Hildebrand’s group has gotten reports that Parsons has been dabbling in sex magic and has the Black Pharaoh’s mirror, provided by Kamen, that provides communication with some of the Great Old Ones. The government has Parsons under surveillance for communist affiliations, and the order has gotten information from various prostitutes about Parsons’ rites. Hildebrand wants Catherine to go to California. Parsons, given his recent success with a female medium and artist, has a thing for redheads like Catherine.
She’s not, Hildebrand quickly adds, to prostitute herself out to Parsons. The order wants to know if the Starry Wisdom and Parsons have a book stolen from Gorringe: The Mortiferum Indicium. It’s a manuscript that instructs how to use the Fire of Cairo when the Church of Starry Wisdom finally attempts to raise Cthulhu.
In California, Catherine, under the guise of a naïve seeker of wisdom and given to visions, inveigles her way into Parsons’ and Kamen’s household where she’ll see a rite of sex magic where Salome, member of Starry Wisdom, seems to merge with some extradimensional creature.
We’ll also meet Whittaker and LeBlanc, two SPEAR agents. That’s Special Physics Exploration And Research, the previous incarnation of SPECTRA. They have Parsons under surveillance, and their ham-handed efforts blow Catherine’s cover.
It all comes to a climax on the summer solstice with a magical rite – Parsons providing a rocket and custom chemicals to go with inhuman chants – in the desert.
Except it doesn’t end there. As befitting an espionage tale, we finish with a surprising revelation.
Wynne does a good job with the psychological enigma of Parsons. As with the SPECTRA books, he provides some believable motivations for wishing to open the door to the Crawling Chaos coming to earth. Readers of the SPECTRA series will be happy to have Catherine on-stage, but, like me, they will probably wish we to learned even more about her.
There are a couple more SPECTRA tales from Wynne, so we’ll see what they have. For now, this 169-page book was another enjoyable foray into Wynne’s world, especially with Fitzsimmons’ art included. show less
When, at the end of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, he had the denizens of the town hauled off to concentration camps with a cover story about enforcing prohibition, he pointed the way to a modern strain of the Cthulhu Mythos story: linking Yog-Sothothery with espionage and the world of covert military operations. Modern versions include series by Charles Stross and David Conyers. And Wynne’s SPECTRA series, of which this is the initial installment, treads similar show more ground.
But first we start with family secrets.
Becca Phillips returns to Arkham for the funeral of her grandmother Catherine. She was a noted professor at Miskatonic U.. Becca loved Catherine as the grandmother who raised her after Becca’s mother committed suicide and Becca’s despairing father deserted is daughter. But it seems Catherine was a better grandmother than mother since there are hints Catherine perhaps caused that suicide and her son blamed her academic and occult pursuits for that. If that weren’t enough, Catherine’s own husband died in an insane asylum.
Becca’s biker dad is a no-show at the funeral, but Catherine’s friend, “Uncle” Neil, gives her a necklace with a golden scarab, an heirloom from her grandmother.
Becca returns to Boston and to her life as a photographer, part-time student, and “urban explorer” of ruins, including those of the asylum her grandfather died in. Her mood is darkening. She suffers from depression and severe seasonal affective disorder, and it’s September.
While exploring the grounds there with her friend Rafael, a graffiti artist from Brazil, she has a disturbing encounter with the Reverend John Proctor of the Starry Wisdom Church. He freaks out when he sees the scarab on her neck. She also meets Moe Ramirez, seemingly a schizo homeless person who wears cheap 3-D glasses and is given to waving a laser pointer about in mystical patterns. But Moe is, of course, more than he seems.
Wynne brings two modern concerns to the Cthulhu Mythos sub-genre: the War on Terror and environmental concerns.
The Church of the Starry Wisdom is this story’s equivalent of some radical Islamic group. Its religious tenets of bringing the Elder Gods back to Earth are just spiritual concerns to some, a distant dream perhaps not to be realized in their lifetime. Others are more dedicated to realizing their vision of a changed rule over Earth.
And they are not, unlike the cultists of Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”, simply interested in orgies and violence. In this 2019 Boston, still suffering from massive hurricane damage and dealing with raising sea levels, some of its members simply think that humanity is too irresponsible to remain the supreme creature on the planet. The planet’s salvation, if it is to have it, lies with the Great Old Ones.
Darius Marlowe is one of the more radical members of Starry Wisdom. An engineering and mathematics student at MIT, he figures out a way, with the help of Nyarlathotep who has materialized into Boston, to bring the Elder Gods back with the help of some magical texts and a 3-D printer, of breaching the barriers between the worlds with a device that can sing the inhuman songs that can do that.
It’s deployed on a Boston subway which results in people being ripped apart by otherworldly monsters and others now given Extradimensional Dimensional Perception so they can now see the monsters on the street and the black sun and tentacles hanging in the sky overhead.
Fortunately, Jason Brooks is also aboard that train and cuts Marlowe’s terrorism short.
Brooks is a field agent for SPECTRA, the Special Physics Emergent Counter Terror Recon Agency. They keep a close eye on the Starry Wisdom cult and have infiltrated it.
Soon, a manhunt for Marlowe ensues in streets where otherworldly monsters rampage, and it sweeps up Becca as a person of interest because, in her explorations of urban ruins, she has taken some strange pictures and an interest in Moe’s odd utterances and writings.
And Brooks will begin to suspect that the Starry Wisdom has its own agent in SPECTRA, and Becca will begin to remember all the bits of occult lore Catherine casually introduced her to and learns her grandmother seems to have been involved in wars between various occult groups which have been going on for centuries.
While Wynne throws in plenty of references to Lovecraft’s original stories, he doesn’t slavishly evoke them. He’s created his own gods and monsters too, and, appropriately for a former professional musician, Wynne’s plot has music as a key tool for cultists.
In a plot of mysticism and magical menace, Wynne is able to justify what would normally seem too convenient coincidences with his characters, including some I haven’t mentioned, often having surprisingly associations with each other. He also doesn’t take their relationships in directions you would expect.
And the story reaches a crescendo at an unexpected location.
I enjoyed this one. With Becca being central, Wynne doesn’t emphasize spies and commandoes though there is enough of that to satisfy from those looking for action and intrigue Becca is a satisfying character who, in dealing with grief, depression, self-doubts, new visions, and new knowledge about her grandmother, has to rouse herself to save the world. show less
But first we start with family secrets.
Becca Phillips returns to Arkham for the funeral of her grandmother Catherine. She was a noted professor at Miskatonic U.. Becca loved Catherine as the grandmother who raised her after Becca’s mother committed suicide and Becca’s despairing father deserted is daughter. But it seems Catherine was a better grandmother than mother since there are hints Catherine perhaps caused that suicide and her son blamed her academic and occult pursuits for that. If that weren’t enough, Catherine’s own husband died in an insane asylum.
Becca’s biker dad is a no-show at the funeral, but Catherine’s friend, “Uncle” Neil, gives her a necklace with a golden scarab, an heirloom from her grandmother.
Becca returns to Boston and to her life as a photographer, part-time student, and “urban explorer” of ruins, including those of the asylum her grandfather died in. Her mood is darkening. She suffers from depression and severe seasonal affective disorder, and it’s September.
While exploring the grounds there with her friend Rafael, a graffiti artist from Brazil, she has a disturbing encounter with the Reverend John Proctor of the Starry Wisdom Church. He freaks out when he sees the scarab on her neck. She also meets Moe Ramirez, seemingly a schizo homeless person who wears cheap 3-D glasses and is given to waving a laser pointer about in mystical patterns. But Moe is, of course, more than he seems.
Wynne brings two modern concerns to the Cthulhu Mythos sub-genre: the War on Terror and environmental concerns.
The Church of the Starry Wisdom is this story’s equivalent of some radical Islamic group. Its religious tenets of bringing the Elder Gods back to Earth are just spiritual concerns to some, a distant dream perhaps not to be realized in their lifetime. Others are more dedicated to realizing their vision of a changed rule over Earth.
And they are not, unlike the cultists of Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”, simply interested in orgies and violence. In this 2019 Boston, still suffering from massive hurricane damage and dealing with raising sea levels, some of its members simply think that humanity is too irresponsible to remain the supreme creature on the planet. The planet’s salvation, if it is to have it, lies with the Great Old Ones.
Darius Marlowe is one of the more radical members of Starry Wisdom. An engineering and mathematics student at MIT, he figures out a way, with the help of Nyarlathotep who has materialized into Boston, to bring the Elder Gods back with the help of some magical texts and a 3-D printer, of breaching the barriers between the worlds with a device that can sing the inhuman songs that can do that.
It’s deployed on a Boston subway which results in people being ripped apart by otherworldly monsters and others now given Extradimensional Dimensional Perception so they can now see the monsters on the street and the black sun and tentacles hanging in the sky overhead.
Fortunately, Jason Brooks is also aboard that train and cuts Marlowe’s terrorism short.
Brooks is a field agent for SPECTRA, the Special Physics Emergent Counter Terror Recon Agency. They keep a close eye on the Starry Wisdom cult and have infiltrated it.
Soon, a manhunt for Marlowe ensues in streets where otherworldly monsters rampage, and it sweeps up Becca as a person of interest because, in her explorations of urban ruins, she has taken some strange pictures and an interest in Moe’s odd utterances and writings.
And Brooks will begin to suspect that the Starry Wisdom has its own agent in SPECTRA, and Becca will begin to remember all the bits of occult lore Catherine casually introduced her to and learns her grandmother seems to have been involved in wars between various occult groups which have been going on for centuries.
While Wynne throws in plenty of references to Lovecraft’s original stories, he doesn’t slavishly evoke them. He’s created his own gods and monsters too, and, appropriately for a former professional musician, Wynne’s plot has music as a key tool for cultists.
In a plot of mysticism and magical menace, Wynne is able to justify what would normally seem too convenient coincidences with his characters, including some I haven’t mentioned, often having surprisingly associations with each other. He also doesn’t take their relationships in directions you would expect.
And the story reaches a crescendo at an unexpected location.
I enjoyed this one. With Becca being central, Wynne doesn’t emphasize spies and commandoes though there is enough of that to satisfy from those looking for action and intrigue Becca is a satisfying character who, in dealing with grief, depression, self-doubts, new visions, and new knowledge about her grandmother, has to rouse herself to save the world. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
It’s been a bit over two years since the events of Red Equinox. Our heroine, the depressive photographer Becca Phillips, has retreated to Brazil after burying her dead lover Rafael there. The tropical climate and wildlife and sun agree with her, and she’s doing some freelance photography work.
But SPECTRA agent Jason Brooks goes there to lure her and her faithful dog Django back to gloomy Massachusetts in January 2022. On the outskirts of Concord, Massachusetts, odd things are going on at show more the “Witch House”, otherwise known as the Wade House. Black snow, the physical residue of the incursion of entities from another dimension in the previous novel, is falling around the house and being sucked in by it. The formidable Northrup, head of SPECTRA, wants Becca’s photographic expertise and the use of her EDEP, Extra Dimensional Entity Perception, which she shares with Brooks. They both gained it by being exposed to the alien music and sights Marlowe of the Starry Wisdom Church brought to Boston.
But what really gets Becca to agree to come back is Brooks telling her that her long estranged father, Luke Phillips, may have disappeared into Wade House.
We learn what can be done in the Wade House when, in a prologue from 2012, Moe Ramirez, uses mystical chords struck on its piano to enter another dimension and hide a magic talisman there. After his death in the preceding book, Ramirez’s notebooks were acquired by SPECTRA. We’ll learn of some connections between Becca’s formidable grandmother Catherine and Ramirez.
Becca is still in possession of the Fire of Cairo which helped her defeat Marlowe and Nyarlatotep’s scheme to bring the Great Old Ones back to earth. But whether it will be any help in the Wade House isn’t clear. But Becca gets a high tech tool from SPECTRA: a drone disguised as a dragonfly which can be sent through the house or other dimensions to do recons.
And the Wade House has plenty of strangeness. Optimized to resonate with alien dimensions and with reflective surfaces that can serve as portals. Nor surprisingly, a certain Zann family was involved in its design.
Northrup wants to make sure nothing comes out of the Wade House. He’s gathered a team that includes a marine biologist (it’s been noted the extradimensional entities seen in Boston have features of some marine life); Hanson, a mathematician we met in Red Equinox; Brooks; Becca; and Nina, Brook’s ex-wife and Becca’s ex-therapist. And, surprisingly, one Reverend John Proctor of the Starry Wisdom Church is an expedition member too. He’s been tortured and coerced into providing his occult knowledge. Naturally, Brooks, leader of the expedition, doesn’t fully trust Proctor. He also still has suspicion that SPECTRA has been infiltrated by a Starry Wisdom cultist.
Besides several forays by expedition members into other dimensions, Wynne takes up the matter of Tom Petrie and his family. He may have been drugged into forgetting what he saw in Boston, but his son has started to draw odd pictures and babble about R’lyeh. Brooks is concerned and keeps this off SPECTRA’s radar since he regards Tom as a friend and doesn’t quite trust his employer.
And there will be a poignant, awkward reunion between Becca and the father who abandoned her, a man who, against his will, seems to have become involved in some of his mother’s occult pursuits.
There will be betrayals, attacks by creatures from other dimensions, and a final confrontation outside the Wade House to again stop the Great Old Ones.
This was another enjoyable SPECTRA tale and fast moving with plenty of violence and intrigue. show less
But SPECTRA agent Jason Brooks goes there to lure her and her faithful dog Django back to gloomy Massachusetts in January 2022. On the outskirts of Concord, Massachusetts, odd things are going on at show more the “Witch House”, otherwise known as the Wade House. Black snow, the physical residue of the incursion of entities from another dimension in the previous novel, is falling around the house and being sucked in by it. The formidable Northrup, head of SPECTRA, wants Becca’s photographic expertise and the use of her EDEP, Extra Dimensional Entity Perception, which she shares with Brooks. They both gained it by being exposed to the alien music and sights Marlowe of the Starry Wisdom Church brought to Boston.
But what really gets Becca to agree to come back is Brooks telling her that her long estranged father, Luke Phillips, may have disappeared into Wade House.
We learn what can be done in the Wade House when, in a prologue from 2012, Moe Ramirez, uses mystical chords struck on its piano to enter another dimension and hide a magic talisman there. After his death in the preceding book, Ramirez’s notebooks were acquired by SPECTRA. We’ll learn of some connections between Becca’s formidable grandmother Catherine and Ramirez.
Becca is still in possession of the Fire of Cairo which helped her defeat Marlowe and Nyarlatotep’s scheme to bring the Great Old Ones back to earth. But whether it will be any help in the Wade House isn’t clear. But Becca gets a high tech tool from SPECTRA: a drone disguised as a dragonfly which can be sent through the house or other dimensions to do recons.
And the Wade House has plenty of strangeness. Optimized to resonate with alien dimensions and with reflective surfaces that can serve as portals. Nor surprisingly, a certain Zann family was involved in its design.
Northrup wants to make sure nothing comes out of the Wade House. He’s gathered a team that includes a marine biologist (it’s been noted the extradimensional entities seen in Boston have features of some marine life); Hanson, a mathematician we met in Red Equinox; Brooks; Becca; and Nina, Brook’s ex-wife and Becca’s ex-therapist. And, surprisingly, one Reverend John Proctor of the Starry Wisdom Church is an expedition member too. He’s been tortured and coerced into providing his occult knowledge. Naturally, Brooks, leader of the expedition, doesn’t fully trust Proctor. He also still has suspicion that SPECTRA has been infiltrated by a Starry Wisdom cultist.
Besides several forays by expedition members into other dimensions, Wynne takes up the matter of Tom Petrie and his family. He may have been drugged into forgetting what he saw in Boston, but his son has started to draw odd pictures and babble about R’lyeh. Brooks is concerned and keeps this off SPECTRA’s radar since he regards Tom as a friend and doesn’t quite trust his employer.
And there will be a poignant, awkward reunion between Becca and the father who abandoned her, a man who, against his will, seems to have become involved in some of his mother’s occult pursuits.
There will be betrayals, attacks by creatures from other dimensions, and a final confrontation outside the Wade House to again stop the Great Old Ones.
This was another enjoyable SPECTRA tale and fast moving with plenty of violence and intrigue. show less
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