Monday, February 1, 2016

Lansdale, Joe R: Lost Echoes

Harry Wilkes has visions following a childhood illness.   They are formed when he is in places that
have seen murder performed.   While in college, he has perfected the routes he takes to avoid seeing
any of these but is then taken up by the local rich man's gorgeous daughter.   This rather unnecessary
episode comes to an end when she takes him a hideaway on the family estate where he has a vision
of a man's death while holding her - tightly enough to bruise her.   She rejects him, though her actions
were a ploy to make someone else jealous, her father has him beaten up and he starts drinking heavily
until one evening when he sees an elderly drunk beat three muggers.   The drunk befriends him and
agrees to teach him martial arts, get off the booze and, hopefully, tame the visions.   His childhood
girlfriend who had moved away has now become a member of the local police force and she asks him
to help her find out what really happened to her father, also a policemen, who apparently had killed
himself.   The outcome is that he was killed by the current police chief as he intended exposing the
latter's killings, one of which being the one Harry saw with the rich girl friend.   The episodes with
the rich girl do not really add to the story which ends up as a straightforward (more or less) thriller
with the inevitable happy ending.   Readable but not anything special.

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