A Frightening Haunting

In this sequel, Anne Frasier takes readers back to the haunting of Old Tuonela as the town's forgotten dead are awakened by the museum display of the evil vampire and murderer, the Pale Immortal, and igniting a series of shocking and gruesome deaths. Frasier once again brings life to unique, dark characters and uses her expert level of storytelling to add realism to this tale of ghostly possession. Readers will discover Old Tuonela as a place where lost souls, both dead and alive, fight for dominance as secrets of the past and present collide. A mixture of Amityville Horror with a historical twist of revenge, this novel is dark, chilling, and down right terrifying. If you need a strong fix of supernatural scary, Garden of Darkness, is where you'll find it.

Kelly Parra, author of GRAFITTI GIRL

If you like your dark paranormal with the sinister edge of a suspense thriller and more than a dose of horror, then check out Anne Frasier and her Pale Immortal series. Trust me, it will grab you!

Midnight Moon Cafe

When I find myself leaving all the lights on, it’s a good sign I’ve found an exceptionally clever and scary read. While the story grabbed me, the book’s creepy atmosphere made my skin crawl. But what made Frasier’s book so compelling was the heart-wrenching love story between Rachel and Evan. The book is layered with rich detail, the subplots nuanced with shadows. Also of note is the smooth way Frasier combined first person and third in the same book, which I felt added texture and another dimension to the story. Garden of Darkness is truly one of the more exceptional books I’ve read.

Armchair Interviews

This book is creepy -- not for reading before going to bed and not for the faint of heart, even during daylight hours. Frasier definitely delivered on this sequel to Pale Immortal.

Word Nerd

    "Garden of Darkness, the second Tuonela thriller is a fabulous horror thriller that combines events from the past with a frightening present. The story line grips the audience from the moment a couple driving stop when the woman who just miscarried sees a girl and never slows down from her first scream to the last confrontation. Keep the lights on as Anne Frasier provides a powerfully scary supernatural tale."
    --Harriet Klausner

    "When I find myself leaving all the lights on, it’s a good sign I’ve found an exceptionally clever and scary read. While the story grabbed me, the book’s creepy atmosphere made my skin crawl. But what made Frasier’s book so compelling was the heart-wrenching love story between Rachel and Evan. The book is layered with rich detail, the subplots nuanced with shadows. Also of note is the smooth way Frasier combined first person and third in the same book, which I felt added texture and another dimension to the story. Garden of Darkness is truly one of the more exceptional books I’ve read."
    --Cerri Ellis

    "Frasier has created a compelling take on the vampire myth that leaves plenty of room for more in this suspenseful series of sinister secrets and unspeakable evil. There are modern day parallels with Manchester and his followers that add a ring of authenticity to the main storyline. Taut action and excellent character development make this one of the better horror offerings. "
    --Sandy Amazeen

 

Maximum Horrors Review
Anne Frasier - Pale Immortal - 2006 Onyx (Paperback)

I remember in high school I got caught up in the gothic vampire image, really crawling deep into the dark to envision myself as an immortal in black, a dark cape shrouded around an intense bloodlust. Of course it was all just fun and games, and by the time I discovered beer, heavy metal, and women, well that sort of thing just seemed rather silly. Looking back though I did enjoy the normal rag tag affair with vampire literature, from the Anne Rice classics to King's "Salem's Lot", and so forth. However since then I have always strayed from any vampire horror novels, really just finding the whole thing too sexual and far too intimate for my tastes. However, I recently stumbled on a book entitled "Pale Immortal". The novel came out in September of 2006 and for the life of me I just couldn't stop staring at the book cover. The author is Anne Frasier, apparently a USA Today bestselling author who has found her niche with suspense thrillers like "Before I Wake", "Hush", and "Play Dead". I found it interesting that an author who spends most of her time writing about CSI units huddling over bloodstains would find the art of vampire storytelling a bit irrational. Apparently Frasier has been blessed with a real gift for writing, evident on the delightful "Pale Immortal".

Frasier introduces us to a place called Old Tuonela, a rather small town nestled in south Wisconsin. The name originates from Finland meaning "land of the dead". One hundred years ago a serial killer nicknamed "The Pale Immortal" terrorized Tuonela, killing some fifty plus women and children and drinking their blood. The town was so outraged and brutalized by the carnage that they completely abandoned the town streets, picking up and moving the town five miles away. Since then it has simply been called Old Tuonela, a town that has slowly withered away with it's abandoned shops, houses, and streets. It is a place that no one will go to, a place that adults fear and the subject of many children's ghost stories. Tuonela (new Tuonela) goes on with life, a community that is the perfect tribute to small town America.

Evan Stroud lives in Tuonela, a man who suffers from an incurable disease that makes him live in the dark. He can never be in the sun, constantly "living" at night and rarely seeing other Tuonela citizens. Many people think that Evan Stroud is the devil, a vampire that prowls the streets at night looking for blood. Some say he is the descendant of "The Pale Immortal". Stroud simply wants to make the most of his life, no matter how hard it is. One day Graham Yates shows up at his door, a rebellious teenager who claims to be his long lost son. Stroud contacts the local authorities and makes a home for Yates until his mother can be located. Soon we are introduced to Rachel Burton, a childhood friend of Stroud who works in Tuonela as the town coroner. She stumbles upon a murder investigation involving a victim who was killed and drained of her blood.

Is Stroud a vampire? Is he the killer? Those are questions that aren't even answered until the last page. Until then we get murders, kidnappings, town secrets a plenty, and of course a good bit of supernatural phenomenon. It all adds up to one helluva horror novel, easily the best work I've read in 2006. Frasier is a master storyteller, really painting new Tuonela with rain swept streets and foggy twilights. Her character development of Stroud, the loveable Graham, and the heroic Rachel are building blocks upon which a great mystery can be founded. The vampire myth isn't completely overdone, just something that settles in your mind as you watch it unfold. Old Tuonela is something of which nightmares are built, with Frasier really doing wonders by creating a ghost town that was once home to a madman. The crime scenes are vividly described, really showcasing Frasier's endless knowledge of procedure and investigation. While she does those scenes so well, she also manages to make these characters truly special. As we see Stroud struggle with his disease, she also shows us the heartbreaking side of Graham's broken home. By injecting hope, a bit of romance, and the need to save these characters, she resorts to breathtaking storytelling that is both moving and jolting.

The Last Line - This is just simply a masterpiece. I can't wait for the sequel so I can walk Tuonela's streets again.

"Anne Frasier's skill for colliding reality and the supernatural will have
you searching the shadows for things not of this world. Pale Immortal gives
you all the elements of a perfect thriller...a psychotic killer, gut-curling
suspense, and storytelling that makes your blood run cold."

Kelly Parra
Author of GRAFFITI GIRL

Perhaps evil flows like a river. Once in a while it rains, but somewhere, deep in the shadows, all black water must drain. Old Tuonela is one of those places, and Anne Frasier is walking down for a swim. Want to tag along?

--Jason Evans is the twilight keeper at The Clarity of Night
clarityofnight.blogspot.com

" Suspenseful and Chilling . . . An intriguing plot involving characters tested to the limits of their physical and emotional endurance. This book will stay with you long after you turn the final page. Anne Frasier is at her best!"

Jeff Neale

Review -- Pale Immortal -- Anne Frasier -- Onyx -- September/2006

The sleepy town of Tuonela Wisconsin is known for one thing: one hundred years ago a killer known as the Pale Immortal had stalked its streets and drained his many victims of blood. Nobody has lived in Old Tuonela since then, the residents choosing instead to move their town to a new location where the valleys are less dark and warning others that old Tuonela was a place no human should ever go. These days it’s only the Goth kids and the odd tourist or land speculator who dare go there. But one day the town’s past rises up with gruesome clarity; the drained corpse of a young girl is discovered dumped alongside a local road. Has the Pale Immortal risen from his unmarked grave and started killing again - or is some other monster responsible for the despicable act?

Many people choose to blame recluse Evan Stroud. The writer lives in solitude and is forced to haunt the darkness due to his rare affliction of porpheria. He’d often thought of leaving Tuonela since there are those who don’t understand his illness and would rather taunt him for being a “vampire”. But… where would he go? Here everybody was used to him. He didn’t have to explain anything, and for the most part people accepted him. He might be a freak, but he was their freak. Sometimes he even gets a kick out of playing up the “vampire” act and scaring curious kids or the odd “crazy” off his property. If not for the return of his childhood friend, Rachel Burton, Evan might have pulled up stakes. But after her long absence they’re both ready to renew their acquaintance and maybe take it to another level.

Evan’s life takes another turn when he meets Graham Yates, the son he never knew he had. While Evan waits for DNA proof, Graham gets mixed up with a small group of Goth-obsessed teens who believe that the Pale Immortal's rotting bones hold the power of life and death and immortality. For a boy who’s craved nothing more than stability and acceptance his entire life it’s easy for Graham to fall into their vampire-obsessed underworld. But he, as well as Evan and Rachel, have no idea of the true evil they must face once they venture into the dark and shadowy streets of Old Tuonela.

Pale Immortal is one of those nifty, page-turning thrillers that begs you to keep reading non-stop until you turn the last page. And Anne Frasier is a writer whose talent for creating vividly fractured characters and dark, disturbing atmosphere and theme is evident. As she's done so well in her previous books, she sets the tone for menace and fear from the start where Graham's less than likeable mother threatens, "If you aren't good, I'll send you to Tuonela. You don't want to go to Tuonela, do you"? That same aura of menace as well as mystery ratchets up with every chapter as Evan and Rachel race to find Graham and to unmask a killer. But all along Frasier leaves hints that she's not quite done with Evan -- and that the mysterious link he has with the Pale Immortal has yet to be answered. If you want a taste of something a little different then Pale Immortal is definitely a heady and sinister brew -- as long as you don't mind waiting until next year for the next sampling.

Martina Bexta, Bookloons

www.bookloons.com

Pale Immortal by Anne Frasier

Title: Pale Immortal

Author: Anne Frasier

Genre: Fantasy

Summary: An old legend returns to Tuonela, WI, when the body of a high school student is found in the town square. Evan Stroud is the town's suspect, while the police are finding evidence that gives credence the rumors.

The Take-Away: Evan's problems are compound by an illness called porphyria. High school kids use Evan as the butt of jokes and dares. Evan uses his disease to see the side of Tuonela that few others do. He rooms the town at night, when it is safe for him.

Evan isn't the only haunted person in Tuonela. Rachel Burton has returned and fears the visions of a woman named Victoria. Graham has been threatened his entire life with "If you aren't good, I'll take you to Tuonela to live with your father." His mother made good on the promise and dropped him at Evan's door.

Evan, Rachel and Graham are thrown together in unusual circumstances and supported by a variety of minor characters. Each has vital role in the return of the Pale Immortal.

I read through the first 145 pages without even realizing I had finished more than a third of the book. I read the last half of the book slower, mostly because of my over-active imagination made the most of the terror and turned my shadowy bedroom into a part of Old Tuonela.

Even at the end of the book, I wanted more. The temporary problem of murder is solved, but not the personal struggles of Evan, Rachel and Graham. The characters are long-lasting. I hope that a sequel is planned.

Recommendation: Buy it in September.

Stacie Penney, Raspberry Latte Book Reviews
http://raspberry-latte.blogspot.com/

The town of Tuolena, Wisconsin actually exists, according to the author and some maps. While stopping at a diner in Black River Falls, Anne Frasier overheard some locals talking about the Tuolena vampire who used to roam the streets at night of this small town on the Wisconsin River.

In “Pale Immortal” Anne Frasier blurs the lines of “genre fiction” with a tale of a town (Tuolena) and its local vampire. Best selling author Evan Stroud has made his living writing about the “Pale Immortal” aka Richard Manchester, who used to drink and bathe in the blood of his many victims. There’s even a Richard Manchester fan club of sorts: The Pale Immortals. Teenagers, they’ve taken “goth” to whole new levels.

Now, most people think Stroud himself is a vampire. He only goes out at night, his shades are always drawn, and his skin is so pale you can almost see through it. But there’s a reason: he has a disease called porphyria; he’s allergic to sunlight. And recently, he’s been suffering blackouts. He can’t account for his time or whereabouts, which is troublesome because there’s been a recent rash of corpses drained of blood.

When the murders become personal, and those closest to him are suddenly in mortal danger, Stroud must stay at least one step ahead of the police and find out what evil controls and lurks behind the Pale Immortals.

As with the best in this type of fiction, “The Pale Immortal” is ambiguous. It can be read as a modern vampire story, or as a believable serial killer thriller. But believe it or not, “Pale Immortal” makes for a gripping read.

Gary

Once Upon a Crime

I got an ARC for this completely by accident, by being my usual obnoxious self over at Anne Frasier's blog. See, ma, I AM good for something!

It's not a vampire novel, though it tries to fool you into thinking that it is. It was the horror novel I didn't know I was looking for, the kind where the horror comes not from some invisible beast running loose, though there is one of those, but rather from the people having to live and deal with it, and the truths in themselves and their friends that they have to come to terms with.

I was hooked from the first page and burned through it like Sherman through Georgia. She captures the empty, dreamlike feel of a small town at night, the isolated loneliness of a man, Evan Stroud, confined to the dark by a disease that prevents him from going out into the sun, and the confusion and turmoil of his teenage son, Graham, who has only now met his father.

An excellent novel that I can't recommend enough.

Stephen Blackmoore

Pale Immortal
by Anne Frasier
Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group Imprint: Onyx

Reviewed by Sharron Stockhausen – Armchair Interviews

Minnesota writer Anne Frasier takes us to her neighboring state of Wisconsin and the small town of Tuonela, a town that holds on to its residents while other small towns lose theirs.

A century earlier, Old Tuonela, a few miles from Tuonela, was home to The Pale Immortal, a man deemed a vampire by the locals and the reason people moved their beloved town away from the evil ground he lived on and was buried in.

As Evan Stroud became more sensitive to sun, rumors of him being a modern-day vampire buzzed around Tuonela. Dr. Rachel Burton, Evan's childhood friend and Tuonela's coroner, knew his disease, porphyria, was the real reason Stroud lived in the night world and hid from view during the day.

The same night Graham, the teenage son Stroud never knew he had, was dropped off by his mother on Stroud's doorstep, a local teenage girl was found murdered and drained of all her blood.

Graham, befriended by a group of boys fascinated with the Pale Immortal, eventually finds himself held captive in dank, dark Old Tuonela and fighting for his life.

Evan, in hiding because he's the prime suspect in the teen girl's murder, uses his advantage of living in the darkness to try to save his son.

Every time things seem about as bad as they can be, something worse happens.

Few books keep me turning pages from dark till dawn, but this one did. Be prepared, for it could happen to you too.

Sharron Stockhausen served two terms as president of Twin Cities (Minnesota) Sisters In Crime.

Armchair Interviews says: Get comfy before reading this book as time will pass quickly as you turn page after page.

From Our Armchair to Yours ...

Pale Immortal By Anne Frasier


Pale Immortal follows a number of key characters, whose lives intertwine in a series of events that will change the course of their lives forever. The story begins with a boy being abandoned by his mother at the house of the man she says is his father, a man the boy has never set eyes on in his sixteen years.
The man, local author and town freak Evan Stroud, is convinced the boy can’t be his son. He has his own challenges, as a man with porphyria (otherwise known as the Vampire disease), unable to go out in sunlight, feared by the locals.
We also have the county coroner and medical examiner, Rachel Burton, dealing with a young girl murdered, her body drained of blood.
Add in the local lore about the Pale Immortal, a “vampire” who committed heinous crimes decades before, and you have the foundation of a story that is almost more about a town haunted by itself and its past, and how those lingering ghost stories and legends impact the living in the present.
“Old Tuonela was a scary campfire story, a flashlight under the chin.” Lines like that resonate with the child in each of us that sat by the firelight in the dark night, not wanting to admit we were scared senseless by silly stories of murderers and monsters. Frasier taps into those real fears, allowing us to empathize with the struggle the characters face as they sort out the real horrors from the imagined.
Stepping into the mind of the boy, we find him thinking, This is what it was about. These moments that crept up on you out of nowhere and whispered mysterious unformed promises that made you want to live for something you didn’t even know existed. Passages like that grabbed me. I could relate to these characters and their challenges, fears and frustrations.
Frasier delivers twist upon twist. Things I expected to have happen didn’t, turned out differently, or she added another dimension to the situation that made it hit home effectively. This is the kind of book that builds to a slow boil, and then bubbles incessantly and will keep you turning pages to the end, desperate to find out what happens. It was a different kind of read for me, with the vampire/paranormal elements to the storyline, but Frasier is an expert at haunting the reader.
I don’t want to give any spoilers or delve too deeply into the plot, but my usual routine is to read a book, write up a ‘quick and dirty’ review and then let it sit for a week. I go back, look over my initial thoughts, and then write the proper review. It gives a book a chance to settle. It tells me if it’s utterly forgettable, or the kind that lingers with you long after you’ve read the last page.
Pale Immortal is the kind that lingers. The characters are rich, complex. The story is masterfully spun. The deeper issues at play in the book resonate. It seems a bit early for predications, but I’m betting this book will be on my top ten reads of 2006.
The only thing that would have made the experience better of reading this book better would have been reading it on a dark fall night with the wind whipping the barren trees outside, but despite the sunshine and heat I could still feel the hair on the back of my neck standing on end, followed by shudders down my spine.


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Spinetingler Editor/Submission Director
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