Read FSF, January-February 2010 for Free Online

story about an extraordinary dog. The insight it gives into Koontz's novels is simply a bonus.
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    Here After , by Sean Costello, Your Scrivener Press, 2008, Cdn$20.
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    Sean Costello made a bit of a splash in the late eighties/early nineties with books such as Eden's Eyes and The Cartoonist . He penned one more horror novel and a couple of thrillers before he kind of faded from the public eye. This tends to happen in the publishing field for any number of reasons, so when it did, I did what most readers do: I found other things to read.
    But I remembered liking those books, so when Here After showed up in my P.O. box, I was happy to give it a try.
    Peter Croft is an anesthesiologist. At the beginning of the book he's just lost his ten-year-old son, David. Grief makes it hard for him to let go and he spirals into an understandable depression that makes him unable to do his job properly. Instead, he sits in his empty house, just marking time. But then he starts to get what seem to be messages from David with clues to children who have gone missing.
    Suddenly, Croft has a purpose again.
    It doesn't matter that people think he's crazy—he thinks he might be a little crazy—but it gives him a chance to connect to his boy once more and maybe help others from having to go through what he did.
    Costello hasn't lost his touch over the years. The prose is still sharp, the characters well drawn. That said, I found this a hard book to read—particularly the first third—and I imagine it would be even more difficult for anyone who has lost a child. Croft's grief is so deep, and it's so realistically portrayed, that it leaves one feeling emotionally drained.
    I'm not saying it's a bad book—not by any means. But it's not one that I would ever reread.
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    Three Days to Dead , by Kelly Meding, Dell, 2009, $6.99.
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    What a terrific opening: Evan-geline Stone wakes up on a cold morgue table, in a stranger's body, with a big gap in her memory that includes how she ended up there in the first place.
    She's one of a Triad of bounty hunters whose job is to get rid of all the murderous creatures that exist just out of sight: vampires, trolls, and the like. Stone's Triad were the best at their job, but something happened and now all three of them are dead, except Stone has come back, stuck in the body of a recent suicide that has none of the motor skills Stone once took for granted.
    She needs to find out what happened, but every Triad, every monster, even the mundane police are after her. She's on the run and on a deadline because it also turns out that the reincarnation spell is going to wear off in three days. When it does, she'll die again, but this time it's for good.
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    Three Days to Dead is a fun, fast-paced book, with a likable lead and a lot of energy. I liked pretty much everything about it, though I could have done without the complete Hollywood ending. The first rule of magic is that there should be a cost, otherwise it becomes too much like pulling a rabbit out of a hat as opposed to something with resonance. But hey, there's already a second book in the series on the publisher's schedule, so it's not like we didn't know how it would turn out.
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    Street Magic , by Caitlin Kittredge, St. Martin's Press, 2009, $6.99.
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    I have one big problem with this book, and I'll get to it in a moment. First, let me tell you this is a great addition to the ever-expanding sub-genre of Urban Fantasy.
    Pete Caldecott (a woman, never mind the distraction of the name) is a Detective Inspector with the London police. While investigating the kidnapping of a young girl, she follows a tip only to come face-to-face with a mage named Jack Winter whom she saw killed before her eyes twelve years previously. Winter is still the bleached-blond, punk rock reprobate she knew, except now he has a heroin habit. Otherwise, he's very much alive.
    Kittredge reveals their history before Winter's “death” in bits and