Fine little entertainment. Last book in the "Black Oak" series, a detective agency that isn't afraid of the supernatural, well they are but they take them on anyway. We have some real monsters here, not just some mayhem explained away by logic and science. Grant hints at future Black Oak stories that sadly never were, since this was to be the last book in the series.

Probably would have been better if read in order but I just picked up the random volume at the used bookstore. ( )

if you think you're interested in reading this one, please start with #1 and work your way forward. You really just will be lost if you don't.

In the book before this one, Black Oak: Hunting Ground, our hero Ethan Proctor was fired from his job of looking for Taylor Blaine's daughter Celeste, who has been missing for 13 years. As he ponders this, he receives a communication from a teacher down in Georgia which asks him to come down there and investigate the disappearances and deaths of various people in the swamplands there. Proctor also gets his first good lead on Celeste: it seems that one of the women who disappeared with her looks like a woman by the same first name who had been (until she disappeared) running a New Age type store. So off goes Proctor and his team into the swampy backwaters.

If you haven't read the first one, you won't understand the significance of the ending of this book. I'm hoping that Charles Grant writes a few more of these...it's like the X-Files where the mythos is in the background, but you keep watching because eventually all the threads are hopefully going to connect.

recommended...but DO read 1-4 first! ( )