Forever Will You Suffer » (REV)

Gary Frank writes songs and poetry, plays guitar and works a day job in corporate America. He lives outside Trenton, New Jersey.

Unsuspecting Rick Summers had simply gone to the cemetery to visit the graves of his mother and sister, killed in a car accident years earlier. He had the cabbie wait for him. But when he got back into the taxi, he didn’t have the same driver. His new chauffeur was a re-animated corpse. And he was about to take a drive into hell. The doors to hell open in the house of his ex-lover, Katarina, where he is delivered by his not-so-sweet smelling driver. Rick learns that Katarina is missing and has been recently plagued by a stalker. That’s just the beginning of the bad news. When the house changes right before their unbelieving eyes, taking them somewhen and somewhere else, a horrifying mystery begins to unfold. At its heart is unrequited love. And Rick Summers. It seems that several lifetimes ago, Rick, then Thomas, spurned a woman named Abigail. Not a good idea. Because Abigail’s great at holding a grudge, some of her best friends are demons, and she’s dedicated to keeping a promise she made to Rick long, long ago. “Forever will I remember; forever will you suffer.”

Publishers Weekly

Can true love conquer an onslaught of horrors that includes a taxi-driving zombie and flesh-rending spiderlike monsters? Readers will find themselves sorely challenged to stick with this scattershot spooker long enough to find out. Events kick into overdrive in the opening pages as bookstore clerk Rich Summers is hijacked by a reanimated corpse from the cemetery where he has been visiting the graves of his mother and sister and deposited at the home of Katarina, a former girlfriend. Katarina is missing, and shortly after Rich finds this out from her new lover, Meggan, the house morphs into another dimension where replays of grim events from distant pasts and alternate realities regularly occur. Frank writes with admirable energy, but the relentlessly escalating weirdness of his story leaves little room for development of characters or plot. As a result, this debut novel plays out like a feature-length B-movie horror trailer: intriguing, fast-paced, but unfulfilling. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.