I Read Books: Kill Radio by Lauren Bolger

 

Kill Radio

Five-year-old Rory runs from the house after a monster gets in, finds anti-social fisherman Stanton who takes him home. His mother, Rachelle, claims it was just a coyote; Rory that it was a black dog.

Rory has found an old crystal radio set, which belonged to Chad. Rachelle left Chad while pregnant with Rory, she thought the radio had been left behind. They all know that even if it’s a coyote it isn’t right. Stanton is delivering that morning because Javier, who usually does it, is missing. There are odd events and strange visions going on.

As things get stranger James arrives at Rachelle’s work, taking a job that didn’t previously exist. A job that really she ought to have got if she’d known about it. If anyone had known about it. The radio is calling, and James, witch, occult detective, liar and necromancer, is the most benign of those on their way to find it.

Kill Radio spirals through these characters, concealing as much as revealing, their pasts blending into the present. The powers that the radio have summoned up can possess people and repress their memories. There are ghosts walking amongst them, and James can summon them up if he wishes. If he can bear the cost. Everyone is hiding things, often as much from themselves as from each other.

There are monsters as well, monsters that the characters have run away from, or tried to banish. Their denial has worked so far. But now the past comes back to haunt them. Rachelle ran away from Chad because of the radio, and because of everything that had happened to him before. But now she will have to return and confront him. And hope that the magic, the magic of earth, moon, flower and sea, will work to stop the demons who are coming through to haunt them.

The book weaves it’s threads boldly, occasionally too boldly. The pattern can get lost as we shift from the present to the past, as dreams and memories mix into magic and discovery. Yet when it works it presents stark, hideous images in juxtaposition with entertaining characters

Read This: A taut, pacy supernatural mystery horror
Don’t Read This: The constant shifts in points of view and time sometimes conceal, confuse and even annoy
Disclosure: Malarkey Books sent me a digital ARC of this novel