Black Magic Woman

I like a good supernatural thriller so I'm very glad that I decided to pick up Black Magic Woman by Justin Gustainis, which deals with investigator Quincey Morris and white witch Libby Chastain.

Morris is called in to help protect a family from a curse that goes back to the Salem Witch Trials and enlists the help of Chastain. Their quest takes them across America all the while the target of a powerful black witch.

Gustainis has a great writing style that skillfully mixes fictional characters with his 'real' world. Quincey Morris for example, is the great grandson of the Quincey Morris who helps Van Helsing defeat Dracula, and other characters from fiction are woven into the narrative.

The story has it all with black magic, white magic, voodoo, Zulu magic, demons and succubi. It is also quite brutal, characters die and not in a pretty way either, usually it is quite violent which adds to the gritty nature of the story. An impressive book and I look forward to reading more about this duo.

BPRD

The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is a series of graphic novels by Mike Mignola that have spun off from Hellboy. The BPRD is where Hellboy works and this new series highlights the work of Hellboys colleagues. As I said in my post about Hellboy, Mignola is an inventive writer and this is shown to great effect in this series.

If your looking for something that draws on mythology, horror stories and things that go bump in the night then this is something you should look out for.