The small Southern town of Niceville is anything but nice. Strange things happen after a young boy named Rainey Teague suddenly vanishes while looking into a mirror displayed in a store window-and is later found alive in a grave that hasn't been opened in years. Over the next 36 hours, four police officers are murdered following a bank robbery. Then a wealthy widow and her elderly handyman vanish mysteriously. Police officer and troubled veteran Nick Kavanaugh has a personal connection to the crimes as his wife, Kate, is Rainey's legal guardian, and his father-in-law, who has been investigating the town's mysterious past, also soon disappears without an obvious cause. What Nick finds will draw him and Kate into an old family feud and desire for retribution that has extended from beyond the grave. VERDICT Stroud effectively combines elements of police procedural and ghost story to create an absolutely riveting novel that goes beyond genre fiction as it explores the nature of evil, both human and supernatural.-Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, MA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Niceville is the epitome of a small, picturesque southern town brick homes, sun-dappled streets, shade trees dripping moss, river mist cooling the air. Unfortunately, its population isn't equally pleasant, as demonstrated early on when a greedy cop, complicit in a bank robbery, dispatches four fellow officers in a brutal (almost gleeful) ambush. If that's not enough, during the course of a mere 36 hours, an abusive husband with a thirst for vengeance outs a father who has taken compromising pictures of his daughters; the corrupt, racist owner of a security company gets his comeuppance from a beleaguered employee; and a young boy vanishes only to turn up, alive, in a long-sealed tomb. Is it all foreordained by dark forces emanating from past wrongs? Stroud's combination of the supernatural with the hyperrealistic never quite jells, but, on balance, he literally gives plenty of bang for the buck. A generous collection of memorable villains, tight action sequences, and an occasional bit of black humor are enough to keep readers turning pages.--Zvirin, Stephanie Copyright 2010 Booklist

A tedious effort to create a gothically-tinged bestseller. Stroud's title is, of course, ironic, for a weird game's afoot in Niceville, Ga. Ten-year-old Rainey Teague has disappeared on his way home from school, and though a search party is dispatched, it is some time before he's found crying and locked inside a crypt in a local Confederate cemetery. The crypt belongs to Ethan Ruelle, who died in a duel on Christmas Eve in 1921. Even more bizarre is that shortly before his disappearance, a security camera picked up an image of Rainey looking into a mirror in the window of a curiosity shop--one second he's there, and the next he's vanished. Stroud next lurches us in a new direction by introducing Coker, Danziger and Zane, a trio of truly unsavory characters. While Danziger and Zane are trying to elude capture by the cops and news helicopter that are giving chase, Coker calmly shoots the cops and the helicopter pilot--four shots, four hits. It's clear he's no ordinary killer--his expertise emerges because he's in law enforcement himself. Meanwhile, Detective Nick Kavanaugh is trying to solve the mysterious disappearance--and even more mysterious reappearance--of the now-catatonic Rainey. Nick's wife, Kate, a lawyer, is concerned about her husband's preoccupation with the case and consults her father, a professor at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va., who has an immediate suspicion about the magical potency of the mirror that had so fascinated Rainey. Stroud follows the bestseller party line in which when one doesn't quite know what to do, one throws in a new character, preferably one with a self-consciously clever name (like police officer Mavis Crossfire). Stroud manages to make his mysterious and violent doings both banal and vapid. ]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Thriller author Stroud (Close Pursuit) begins this shoot 'em up meets supernatural thriller with a high-speed chase between cops, a getaway car, and a news chopper that is gruesomely cut short by a conspiring sniper. The bloodbath sets in motion a three-day flurry of dimly related events, including a standoff between an accused pedophile and a SWAT team, a father caught taping his daughters in the shower, and the takedown of an anonymous tipster for his own heinous crimes. As the entangled story unravels, "random stranger abductions" continue across the small Southern town of Niceville. After a missing boy is found alive in a fresh grave, clues surface about who-or what-is behind it all. In this unnecessarily convoluted mind-bender, Stroud introduces key players without sufficient backstory, making differentiation difficult. The genre jargon-thick prose can be campy ("Coker felt that line-of-duty death was like the jalapenos on a chimichanga; it added spice to patrol work that could be pretty damn boring most of the time") and some plot twists, while intriguing, clutter rather than clarify. The ending leaves mysteries unsolved, but a pending follow-up book may provide answers, if readers are willing to return to Niceville. 100,000 announced first printing. Agent: Barney Karpfinger. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.