Customer Reviews

The Hides

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After years upon years of too much, too loud, too bloody, too graphic, Kealan Patrick Burke arrives on the scene to give us a more mature and subtle approach to the horror tale. A kind of Medium meets Stand By Me, the story is as much a sensitive coming of age novel as it is a horror story, and as such we CARE about the characters. I think this is easily one of the best horror novels of 2005. No question about it.

Now, Mr. Burke...give us more of the same!

Mr. Burke is a gifted author in the tradition of Charles Grant, and The Turtle Boy quietly makes your skin crawl. Great stuff!

I discovered this author, Mr Burke, from his first book in Timmy Quinn series. Im finding these stories spooky and creepy and defiently pages turners. Mr Burke is very expressive in his writing. Though my Favorite author is Dean Koontz, Mr Burke is becoming my next favorite author!! Already bought books 3 & 4 of this series for my Kindle. Great reading.

If I hadn't already been eager to read "The Hides" after finishing the "The Turtle Boy," the first line in this novella would've grabbed me right away. The second part of the Timmy Quinn series moves the story to the author's hometown in Ireland, which provides for a intensely creepy locale. There are genuine shocks and scares throughout this story, and it's so tightly paced you'll be on the edge of your seat reading it. There's a particularly terrifying and action-packed moment near the end that I won't spoil, but you'll know it when you get there. This has my highest recommendation along with the continuation of the series "Vessels" and "Peregrine's Tale." I've heard that Burke is working on the final installment, and I simply can't wait for it to be available!

I really am not one for reviews but after discovering Kealan Patrick Burke in a Cemetery Dance grab bag, I am now hooked. I chose to review this book because it was the first I read by aforementioned author. He's wordsmithery is good, really good. Without giving to much of the story away, it grabbed me right away, a great "ghost" story with feeling. Timmy Quinn is a character worth discovering for yourself. If you like goodness in book form, this is it. Mr. Burke, keep it up!!

Chris

I am loving Timmy Quinn this is second in the series and more longer and deeper story is similarity to Odd Thomas character Dean Koontz created. Timmy is older wiser and gifted now ever since the encounter in first book with the Turtle boy he finds himself haunted from the dead. The evil that mankind done coming back for redemption and Timmy finds himself caught in the web of making things right. Page turning stuff Patrick has way with words that makes the reading darkness joyful. This character he's created really looks promising and I am anticipating with excitement the next Quinn encounter.
" What Timmy could see and had been seeing since eleven years of age were nothing so simple. These things could touch, feel, and manipulate things. They controlled who could see them and used the witnesses for their own ends. These were The Dead, come from beyond a barrier few knew existed. "
" Whenever he was allowed these images, it was for no other reason than to display for him the sins of murderers, a replayed scene from a past that could not be changed by the viewer."
" The knowledge that they existed, those phantoms that forever haunted the corner of the eye, was a form of haunting in itself."

Brief background: this is the sequel to The Turtle Boy, which is one of the best horror novellas of recent years. A young boy, Timmy Quinn, and his friend stumble upon a young boy at the local pond. The boy is letting the turtles in the pond eat from his flesh...it's not long before Timmy realizes he can communicate with the dead. He soon has a mystery on his hands that involves not only the townfolk, but his own father.

Book two in the Timmy Quin series sees Timmy living in Ireland with his father and grandmother. Though he tries to escape his new "curse", he discovers that the dead can find him no matter where he goes. There is a ghost in his grandmother's house that has someting to tell him. And the factory where his father works is teeming with angry spirits who wish his lineage dead. (The Quinn family is pretty screwed up, now that i think about it.) And there is still the issue of just what his father's past holds.

Burke's prose is graceful and poingnant, and a lot of care has gone into this character. The series is fastly becoming one of my favorites. Like the X-files or Lost, the more it progresses aand answers questions, the more we find ourselves with new questions and secrets.

I highly recommnd picking up both The Turtle Boy and The Hides--Burke is sure to become one of horror's greats in a very short time.

Seventeen years old Ohio teenager Timmy Quinn has the uncanny ability to help homicide victims obtain a modicum of revenge by sharing his gift with the murderers. Over the objections of his mother sick of the visits from the curious, the desperate, and the crazies, he agrees to help his neighbor Mr. Knox with his burden, but explains that it is up to the spirit whether to communicate with Quinn; some have moved on while others just do not want to be seen by any living being. However, the case shakes him at a time when he is vulnerable with his parents splitting.

His father asks Quinn to come to their ancestral home in Dungarvan, Ireland to especially meet his grieving paternal grandmother. Though reluctant to leave his mom behind, Quinn thinks this is the right thing to do so he travels across the Atlantic. However, instead of solace in the sea town, he finds the ghosts there much more gruesome looking than back in the States. He wonders why and who the brutal killer could be. He begins to investigate not understanding that he places himself in danger of being the next victim.

Though the ending defies the Burke Law of paranormal-physics (as established throughout by the encounters) THE HIDES is a fantastic ghost story that grips readers from the moment a desperate Knox asks Timmy for his help and continues at a fast pace when the teen takes his skills to Ireland. The action-packed story line works because Timmy and his supernatural talent seem genuine so that the audience believes in ghosts and other apparitions. Horror fans will take immense "gruesome" delight reading Kealan Patrick Burke's solid chiller.

Harriet Klausner