Voices from Beyond

June 23, 2014
Seemingly unrelated back-to-back incidents have paranormal investigators hopping in Green’s fifth Ghost Finders novel (after Spirits from Beyond). JC Chance, Melody Chambers, and Happy Jack Palmer are called to a room where four university students sit in a state of suspended animation, seated around a Ouija board. Adrian Volke, their psychology professor, insists he’s conducted similar psychological “experiments” before, with benign results. This time, though, Melody is certain they are facing diabolical forces from the Outer Reaches. Then Carnacki Institute field team leader Catherine Latimer dispatches the team to a small radio station where everybody’s hearing voices. Grisly visions of team members being grotesquely murdered heighten the sense of danger. Green comes through with more than enough gore, wit, and mild suspense to satisfy series fans.

When it comes to supernatural mysteries, the British solve them them with style, and black humor. The Ghostfinders are called upon when undead voices keep calling a local radio station, warning about some undefined approaching evil. Narrator Tim Gerard Reynolds shines with male voices--particularly that of a depressed telepath named "Happy," who speaks in a slow, heavy Cockney accent. The Ghostfinders' leader sports an urbane North London accent and a crisp, unruffled tone as he attempts to handle the unexplainable. Reynolds's female voices, on the other hand, sometimes sound too whiny. Reynolds's sharp delivery of numerous cutting remarks is enjoyable, but the sarcasm takes away from the suspense of the plot as the writing becomes too witty for its own good. E.E. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine