Covenant by John Everson is a horror novel and the debut novel from this author. The cover trumpets this book as a winner of the Bram Stoker Award and after reading it I can see why. This is a nice taught story, well told, and briskly paced. It's the story about a young 20-something reporter named Joe Kiernan who has moved from Chicago to the small coastal town of Terrel. It's not long before he discovers the deep dark secret that is haunting the town: for some reason people are dying (usually leaping to their deaths from the cliffs of Terrel's Peak) once each year on the exact same day. Joe gladly puts on his investigative reporter persona to escape his usual small town assignments and soon gets in over his head. He is a pragmatist, certain that there is some sort of serial killer on the loose but eventually he has to embrace the idea of a supernatural nature to the tragedies.

This book, I must say, is not for the squeamish. Particularly, in the second half of the book, as the supernatural stuff comes more and more into focus, there is lots of blood and gore and sex, sometimes all together. Everything is on stage and leaves very little to the imagination. You've been warned. I compare this book to the works of Richard Laymon although Laymon's plots tend to be more teenage sexual fantasy whereas this is hard core horror. There is a sequel out called Sacrifice and I'll probably read that as well if it comes across my radar.