The Red Hotel

September 24, 2012
Masterton’s third Sissy Sawyer supernatural mystery (after The Painted Man) shifts the action from New England to Baton Rouge, La. When Sissy’s nephew’s girlfriend, T-Yon, comes to her with questions about a series of horrific nightmares, the psychic and aging hippie uses her rare fortune-telling cards to deduce that T-Yon and her brother, Everett, are in grave danger. Everett’s restoration of a luxury hotel in Louisiana has caught the attention of a malevolent spirit from the building’s past. Faced with an entity powerful enough to disrupt her cards and fill the hotel with killers who can vanish at will, Sissy must recruit the aid of a local vodunista with a dark secret to set things right. Masterton delivers plenty of shocking tableaus of butchered corpses in bathtubs and people literally spilling their guts, but many of the plot developments feel arbitrary, and the final series of twists is underdeveloped.

October 1, 2012
A historic hotel appears to be possessed by the ghost of its former owner and her creepy son. Described as an "unredeemed hippy," Sissy Sawyer believes that she can see into the future with the help of her DeVane deck, beautifully illustrated cards that help her interpret what will come to pass. When her stepnephew, Billy, stops by with his new girlfriend on a rainy Connecticut day, Sissy immediately senses that the beautiful girl has questions for both her and her cards and sends Billy out so that the two may talk alone. T-Yon, Cajun-speak for Petite Lilian, was raised in Louisiana with her brother, Everett. Now she's had a disturbing and embarrassing nightmare about herself, her brother and her brother's latest project, The Red Hotel in Baton Rouge. Sissy wishes she had better news to share, but T-Yon's cards suggest that Everett is in grave danger. So Sissy and T-Yon catch a southbound flight to see if they can help in person. Everett, meanwhile, is determined to make the opening of his latest project a success and is more annoyed than afraid when deputy hotel manager Luther finds a blood-soaked rug in one of the hotel rooms. Although he doesn't believe the rumors giving the other guests freesons (goose bumps), Everett knows he needs to put a stop to local chatter about the hotel being possessed by the ghost of former owner Mrs. Slider with the assistance of her son, Shem. T-Yon hopes that she can make a believer out of Everett before her dream becomes a reality. Though the tropes invoked by Masterton (Festival of Fear, 2012, etc.) may be more tired than tried and true, his imaginative details and storyline more than compensate for any lack of originality.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2012
Sissy Sawyer, the fortune-telling, crime-solving heroine of Touchy and Feely (2007) and The Painted Man (2008), has a very bad feeling about her brother, who's working on the renovation of a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, hotel where residents and staff have recently begun noticing some eerie things happening, like weird noises and unexplained blood stains. Is it possible that the hotel's former manager, the (presumably deceased) killer Vanessa Slider, has returned to her old haunt? Or is there a more prosaic explanation for the mysterious goings-on? Like the previous Sawyer novels, this one's a deft mixture of horror and (light) humor. Fans of the author's harder-edged, more unsettling horror stories might find this one a bit tame, but readers who enjoy their terror leavened with a little levity will have a good time. Sissy is an entertaining and resourceful protagonist, one who could anchor a long-running series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)