Worse Angels (An Isaiah Coleridge Novel)($7.40Value)

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Ex-mob enforcer-turned-private investigator Isaiah Coleridge pits himself against a rich and powerful foe when he digs into a possible murder and a sketchy real-estate deal worth billions. Ex-majordomo and bodyguard to an industrial tycoon-cum-U.S. senator, Badja Adeyemi is in hiding and shortly on his way to either a jail cell or a grave, depending on who finds him first. In his final days as a free man, he hires Isaiah Coleridge to tie up a loose end: the suspicious death of his nephew four years earlier. At the time police declared it an accident, and Adeyemi isn't sure it wasn't, but one final look may bring his sister peace. So it is that Coleridge and his investigative partner, Lionel Robard, find themselves in the upper reaches of New York State, in a tiny town that is home to outsized secrets and an unnerving cabal of locals who are protecting them. At the epicenter of it all is the site of a stalled supercollider project, an immense subterranean construction that may have an even deeper, more insidious purpose. . . . "Intricate and deftly written."-- BookPage "The writing is as fresh as always...Fast-paced, atmospheric, and dark enough to satisfy fans of Barron’s previous work in horror,  Worse Angels  is a crime thriller with a heart full of black magic; a meaty novel full of creepy moments in which the threat of violence is constant."-- Criminal Element “Great plot, but the true treasure is Barron's astoundingly wonderful and distinctive prose style. His descriptions and dialogue are sublime and, overall, he's a beautiful, witty writer whose allusions to or forays into philosophy, archaeology, science and history are enough to make the reader smile with delight.”-- The Day Laird Barron was born in Alaska, where he raised huskies and worked in the construction and fishing industries for much of his youth. He is the author of several short-story collections and three novels, and his work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. A multiple Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Award nominee, he is also a three-time winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Barron lives in Kingston, New York. Chapter One   A blood moon glowered over the Catskills as I climbed out of the hole. I glowered back, imagining claws and fangs and muscles bursting through my clothes the way it happened for Lon Chaney Jr. on moldy old Wolf Man posters. Nothing doing. I remained plain old Isaiah Coleridge, but that was probably bad enough. Werewolf movies were on my mind, for various reasons. Earlier that evening, I'd commented on the topic to my girl, Meg.   Freudian as all get-out, she'd said. Good guy on the surface; woman-and-sheep-ravishing beast on the inside. Those faux romantic posters where the werewolf-in pants!-carries an unconscious gothic heroine in his arms? Not like that. He-it-dragged the woman by her hair. Blood drooled from where the roots tore free. Her shinbones gleamed in the moonlight . . .   You're ruining everything, I'd said. Why do horror movies always preface the main story with a curse that began years, if not decades or centuries, in the past? Does evil need to steep like a tea bag before it can manifest? Didn't get an answer, but one of Meg's enigmatic smiles, as if to say I needed to pay more attention.   "Every rock in the state of New York is in this goddamned hole." Lionel Robard tipped back his safari hat. He leaned on a pickax. It was chilly; steam rose from the sweat on his brow and his matted hair. Rawboned and sinewy, he was built for marathon bouts of hard labor. His Monte Carlo's headlights were on so we could see what we were doing, like a pair of resurrection men in a graveyard after the world had gone to sleep. He needn't have bothered, what with all that nickel-plated moonlight spilling through the mist and the trees.   I wiped my face and popped the top of a beer.   "The wages of sin are digging rocks when you go to bury your ill-gotten treasure." I eyed the inky shadow of a man crouched near an Austrian pine. The longer I peered, the more closely the shadow-man resembled a stump.   Last year, we'd snatched a bunch of money from the secret cache of a notorious murderer romantically dubbed the Croatoan, since deceased. North of one and a half million dollars. Held it and waited. First, to see who might creep from the woodwork searching for the loot, and for us. Second, the bills were minted in the 1960s and '70s. Changing that filthy lucre into contemporary currency without tipping the authorities, or other Wrong People, presented a challenge. Our best bet was to launder the trove via one of my underworld connections at a substantial cost and risk of alerting the aforementioned Wrong People; in this case, the Albany mob.   I kept other items from the Croatoan's cache. Tools of murder, documents, and videocassettes, chiefly. These were buried too, although closer to home in my own backyard. I was tempted to destroy these evil mementos. Yet, what if I needed them one fin