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"Illusion is the first of the pleasures." - Voltaire



when his wife Linda was murdered sixteen years ago, Isaac Winters was left with a daughter to raise and protect. as a detective for the Elmwood Police Department, he has seen his fair share of man's dark side as well. nothing prepares Isaac though for the biggest case of his career when bodies end up as piles of ashes all over his town.
surreal is one word to summarize how i generally feel about this book. bizaare events take place after a young girl finds a small stone statue in a park and i kept guessing as to how these could have been triggered. i thought the story was going to deal with the strange phenomena of spontaneous human combustion but i was proven wrong. it was more than that.
author Richard Brown's characters are battling with inner demons and emotional scars. i think these served as a catalyst for the evil to take root once more and claim its stronghold. the protagonists were like beacons attracting negative forces into their lives. unknowingly, they paid a price for it and i find this concept frightening.
the story rolls smoothly from its double-fisted opening to its dramatic conclusion. i found the latter, however, too abrupt and open-ended and somehow reminded me of Poe's House of Usher.
the Gothic elements that were included were unexpected but i loved how they were integrated into the story.
overall, i liked the book despite the characters' too ready acceptance of the supernatural. i only wished that more detail was given to the Illusionist Lucius' life. his gift of illusion still boggles me but it is an offer that i would never ever want to accept.