Author Greg Lamberson is one very talented, multitasking individual. As adept at writing and directing highly entertaining low-budget horror films, such as Slime City and its recent sequel, Slime City Massacre, as he is in writing informative non-fiction such as his Cheap Scares, a primer on how to make low budget horror films that also includes in-depth interviews with many of the biggest names in the field. Then, too there’s his multiple successful forays into writing truly dark horror fiction that will genuinely frighten even the well-seasoned horror reader, yet contains a knowing humor that contrasts well with the tension and scares. Lamberson has penned multiple award nominated and award winning horror fiction: Johnny Gruesome, Lamberson’s highly popular novel about high school, revenge, and a determined undead antihero, a werewolf series, The Frenzy Wolves Cycle, that began with the 2010 release of The Frenzy Way, and his horror-thriller series, The Jake Helman Files, that began with 2009’s Personal Demons, continued with 2010’s Desperate Souls, and has its third outing with the recently released, Cosmic Forces, the subject of this review.
As the series title suggests, this series of books features as its protagonist one Jake Helman, a former member of New York’s elite Special Homicide Task Force who, fighting a serious cocaine addiction, must resign from the police force, and who initially thereafter takes the position as director of security for Tower International, a high tech and controversial genetic engineering corporation, a position that drastically changes Jake’s life, permanently. Jake eventually becomes a private investigator (PI), in which position he’s found at the opening of this third volume in the series, Cosmic Forces. Jake is visited by Marla Madigan, the attractive wife of New York City’s mayor, a powerful man currently facing an important re-election campaign as a springboard to a potential presidential bid. Marla, seemingly under great stress informs Jake that she knows that her husband is carrying on affairs and isn’t honoring his marital vows but that he refuses to grant her a divorce despite her begging for it. Indeed, her husband, worried about the adverse effect that a public divorce would have upon his political career has not only bought off or scared off all the preceding private detectives she’d hired, but that to prove his point, the mayor was easily able to quietly declare his wife as being ill and mentally unstable (who was suggested to go to Florida luxury rehab for her own good) and have her locked away for weeks until she’d agreed to “play ball.”
Jake, though feeling a “bad vibe” about the case, nevertheless agrees to take it on, which begins his troubles, in earnest. Author Lamberson sets a very brisk pace for the novel and the action never slows down, let alone stops. Rather each scenes and chapter build on what’s preceded it building faster and faster with ever-greater tension, danger and weirdness until a breathtaking climax. The author populates Cosmic Forces with an array of interesting characters, many of whom carry over from the previous novels in the series. For instance, he has an unusual ‘pet’ – a big raven that he diligently cares for and looks after – and even talks to. That’s due to the fact that this particular raven happens to be his transformed-by-black-magic former police task force partner, Edgar Hopkins. Jake’s ongoing search for someone or something that can reverse the spell/curse and transform his partner, who is married man with a wife and son, is one of many fascinating subplots that fill the novel. In a novel of this type, to describe the plot in any detail would be to potentially ruin a great deal of fun for potential readers – but you should be aware that Jake’s initial investigation leads him into a far more deadly mystery, a mysterious cabal of wealthy and powerful men who are trying to control and rule the world, and of the strange and fearsome “god” they worship – a truly fearsome creature and an extremely creative concoction that emerges from the depths of Lamberson’s imagination – one that has the potential of destroying not only the entire planet, but very possibly both heaven and hell as well.
For those wondering if you need to have read the preceding two novels to enjoy Cosmic Forces the answer is no. The author does a superb job of giving his readers all they need to know to keep up with what’s transpiring. The novel is a self-contained story that doesn’t require any knowledge of the previous novels to be fully enjoyed. However, dear readers, to read Cosmic Forces is to become a fan of Jake Helman and his world. You will, believe me, want to seek out copies of the other novels in the series and devour them as well. Lamberson’s Jake Helman is every bit as intriguing and fascinating a character as Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden and the mixture of detective noir mystery with hard-core horror that Lamberson brings to his Jake Helman series will resonate with fans of Butcher’s work, among others. Cosmic Forces is a fast moving, intriguing, action and horror packed read that is a creative tour de force, one that will leave readers equally thrilled and breathless.
- Dark Roads: Selected Long Poems 1971-2012 - September 15, 2013
- That Which Should Not Be - March 12, 2012
- Cosmic Forces - November 11, 2011
- Mile 81 - September 4, 2011
