Monday, March 12, 2007

"Lost Echoes"

Joe R. Lansdale has written more than forty novels in the suspense, horror, and Western genres. He has also edited several anthologies. He has received the British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, and six Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers of America.

His latest novel is Lost Echoes.

Lansdale applied the "page 69 test" to his novel and reported the following:
Page 69 of Lost Echoes captures the style and the mood of the rest of the book, and certainly shows the main character, Harry's burden. Alcohol. And alcohol is a symptom of something worse. Audiochronology. The ability to hear terror and horror in sounds. If any bad thing, violent thing has happened, such as someone being shoved against a door, the door absorbs the sounds, like a manitou, as some American Indians called it; the spirit of the event remains ghost like in the sound, and not everyone has the ability to hear it. But, Harry, due to an earache he had as a child, has somehow tapped into this ability. Every bad thing every done, intentional or accidental, is trapped in sounds. A car hits a tree, someone is hurt, suffers, a year later, years later, someone whacks that tree with a stick, the sound activates the images, and Harry experiences them, feels the terror that has gone before, as well as the pain. Alcohol numbs it all. Not all of this is explained on page 69, but it does give one a bit of that, and it gives a feel for the way the bulk of the story is told. Hopefully, snappy, with a sense of humor and tension.
Read an excerpt from Lost Echoes and check out Joe R. Lansdale's official website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue