Lost Echoes

First: the ingredients--mystery, horror, suspense, the paranormal, sex, some ugly ultra-violence, corrupt hillbilly law enforcement, and the sounds, tastes and smells of East Texas. The cook--the master of this sort of dish. There's also dessert--some are not aware that JRL is a martial arts expert as well as a great fiction writer. In LOST ECHOES we get a taste of the martial arts along with the usual dollops of more conventional violence. This is a Don't Miss book. Nobody does this sort of thing better than JRL.

Joe Lansdale's new book is a blast to read. Just settle back in and get ready to have a dose of realistic heroes, weird powers, martial arts madness, and some of the most fun dialogue you'll run across this year. College student Harry Wilkes has the unnerving ability to "hear" ghosts. Not talk to them or whisper to them. But to see how they met their violent deaths in the last few minutes of their lives. With this power, he's often privvy to some hellish sights and suffering, and to secrets that other people would prefer to stay buried--with the dead. After having the mumps as a kid and getting a bad ear infection, Harry starts hearing ghosts. Violently murdered ghosts most of all. As he grows up, after leaving his home, he isolates himself in a small house that he lines with egg cartons to insulate it from outside noises that might set off one of those close encounters with the dead that he's not overly fond of. Slowly but surely, Harry turns into an alcoholic and ends up meeting Tad Peters, a martial arts expert with his own guilt to carry. They end up becoming friends and it's this friendship that really makes the book work. Lansdale is at his best describing the lives of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. He never fails to deliver outstanding dialogue and characters that are just like people the reader knows. The mystery comes a little late in this one, but when it does it's a doozy. It also forever alters poor Harry's life. Although beginning at a casual pace, readers aren't going to be able to put the book down during the last third of the tale. The book is an enjoyable and fast read from cover to cover. The characters are straight from the heart of Texas and one step over into the Twilight Zone.

I've always been fond of stories by Joe Lansdale when you can find them in the bookstore. I was browsing around and found this one as it's a new novel. You're not going to find anything particulary scary or creepy in this book. This is a novel of a young man coming to age with a supernatural gift and how he deals with this gift. The characters are believable and I really enjoyed the characters transformation from timid child to man. I think there's a small plot flaw in the book however. And it wasn't enough to make me downgrade my review from a 5. I was a little bit surprised that there were some characters introduced that really don't have any effect on the outcome of the novel. What's more, they are dropped out completely towards the end. I was left with a feeling of "what happened to them?" when I finished the book. Good pacing, good visuals, great story.

The great Texas writer, Joe R. Lansdale, is finally back with another mainstream novel, Lost Echoes, and boy is it a keeper! Though Mr. Lansdale has written other books and collections for the smaller independent presses, he hasn't had a mainstream novel out since Sunset and Sawdust. That was three years ago. I've been like a man in the hot, dry desert with no water to drink, trying to be patient as I eagerly awaited this author's next book. Like Stephen King and Dan Simmons, Joe R. Lansdale can write anything that he sets his mind to--horror, westerns, science fiction, fantasy, Texas noir, and award-winning mainstream novels like The Bottoms and A Fine Dark Line. Mr. Lansdale has been writing fiction for well over twenty years; yet, I've had to come to the hard conclusion that he's America's best-kept secret. That's the only answer I can come up with as to why he hasn't reached the point to where he's now a New York Times #1 best selling author. I've been devouring books for over forty-five years, and The Bottoms by Joe Lansdale is the absolute best novel that I've ever read. No brag, just fact. If you haven't read anything by this writer, then I urge to start with his newest novel, Lost Echoes, which will surely hook you with line and sinker as an absolute "Lansdale" fan. I'll tell you another thing to, this book would make one heck of a fabulous movie. Some of Joe's stuff has already been done by Hollywood--Bubba Ho-Tep and Incident On & Off a Mountain Road. Lost Echoes is about a young man named Harry Wilkes (think Ashton Kutcher), who's working his way through college and trying to stay out of trouble. You see when Harry was six-years of age, he became sick with the mumps and developed a serious ear infection that affected a part of his brain. After he got better, Harry quickly discovered that if he were in an area where a violent crime had taken place and he heard a sudden sound, images of the past crime would unexpectedly fill his mind and he would see the actual event happen and the faces of everyone involved. In time, Harry found out that he could hardly go anything without this mysterious ability being triggered. When he tried to explain it his few close friends and to his parents, no one believed him except for Kayla, the first girl he ever loved. As he grew older, Harry had to turn to alcohol as a way of putting up a wall against these disturbing images that threatened his sanity. One night while in a bar with one of his childhood friends, Harry sees three guys take this drunk out the back door. He instinctively knows that the guys are going to beat up and rob the drunk and decides to try and stop it. Rushing out into the back alley, Harry witnesses something right out of a movie as the drunk takes on the three strangers in hand-to-hand combat and whips them all in just a matter of seconds. The drunk turns out to be Tad Peters (think of Bruce Willis), a former martial artist who lost his family in a tragic acc

Joe R. Lansdale takes us into the echoes of evil with a protagonist whose childhood ear infection gives him psychic power he doesn't want. To Harry Wilkes, harsh, explosive images of violence and death linger in the places they occurred -- and he can see and hear them with searingly realistic impact -- private movies in his skull that threaten to madden or demoralize him. Lansdale does the unusual by taking a mystery down the horrific corridors of ghost-like replays and keeps it destructively alive by upping the threat to his modest hero, to his women, and to his closest friend. A steady sprinkling of humor, an interlacing of lust and romance, an NYPD style of abreviated dialogue, and a visceral sense of foreboding sees us through to a satisfying, high-stakes climax that makes it worth the pain of getting there. [Visit my website for the full review: [...]