THE MESSENGER
Jan Burke
Simon & Schuster
Supernatural Thriller
ISBN: 9780743273879
When a salvage diver in the Caribbean Sea hears an insistent voice inside his head, he dismisses it as nothing more than a mechanical failure. But when the voice goes on to promise Eduardo Leblanc immense wealth, knowledge and power in exchange for his help, he can’t resist acquiescing to the voice’s commands. The “voice” is as good as its word, but Eduardo’s Faustian bargain unleashes a force nearly as evil and unforgiving as the devil himself.
For fans of Jan Burke, her latest novel may come as a bit of a surprise. Best known for her Irene Kelly mystery series, she sets out in an entirely different direction in THE MESSENGER. This supernatural thriller features immortal beings, cemetery dogs, spontaneous combustion and a whole graveyard’s worth of ghosts.
Though the book begins with Eduardo, the real story commences 10 years later, when Tyler Hawthorne visits a dying neighbor. Aside from the fact that he is rich, handsome and far more world weary than the average twenty-something bachelor, Tyler also has the odd habit of showing up at the bedsides of people who are near death. When Tyler tells his neighbor Ron that he’s not going to die after all, Ron’s friend, Amanda Clarke, doesn’t bother to hide her disgust. She pegs Tyler as the worst sort of con artist --- one who preys on the weak so he can take advantage of them. But after Ron experiences a miracle recovery within days of Tyler’s visit, Amanda begins to rethink her judgment and regret some of her accusations.
Over the next few months the two begin to grow closer, but Tyler can’t trust Amanda enough to reveal his secret: that when he lay dying at Waterloo nearly two centuries earlier, he met a strange young man and made a deal to save his life. As Tyler watched thousands of undelivered letters flutter across the battlefield, he found himself wishing he could deliver them to the friends and family members they were meant for. Following an impossibly rapid recovery, he soon finds himself doing more or less the same thing. He becomes a Messenger, an essential link between the dying and their loved ones, perhaps the only man who has the ability to help them send messages they aren’t capable of sending themselves.
Unfortunately, Adrian deVille, Lord Varre, the young man who gave Tyler his unusual powers, now wants to take them away --- or at least to reclaim the immortality he had intended to “temporarily” bestow upon Tyler so he could age a couple of decades. To make matters worse, Tyler has no idea that Lord Varre is even a threat; he believes that Lord Varre’s remains are safely locked away in a chest at the bottom of the ocean.
I’ve been a fan of the Irene Kelly series for a few years now and am new to the realm of the supernatural thriller, so this book was a bit of a stretch for me. Tyler and Amanda are interesting, likable characters and the plot is well crafted, but Lord Varre isn’t entirely convincing as an antagonist. Though he is supposed to be the embodiment of evil, at times --- especially toward the end of the novel --- Lord Varre seems more comical than frightening. Still, for fans of the paranormal genre, THE MESSENGER will likely prove an engaging read.
--- Reviewed by Lori Lamothe
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