Cold Moon Over Babylon (1st Book -- RIP VI Challenge)

Whew!  Wasn't sure I was going to make it through this one.  I'm sorry I can't say I enjoyed my first read in the Challenge.  It wasn't totally bad but a little too gruesome for my liking.  There are some images I would not prefer to have lingering in my mind.  After the Prologue, which tells of Jim Larkin and his wife, JoAnn, owners of a blueberry farm near the town of Babylon in the Florida Panhandle, being attacked by rattlesnakes and then drowning in the river near their home (named, appropriately as it turns out, the Styx), the story continues with the murder of their daughter 12 years later, who lived with her brother, Jerry, and paternal grandmother, Evelyn, on the farm.  They are having financial difficulties and are being pressured by the president of the bank, Nathan Redfield, whose father, the richest man in Babylon, was once the president but became disabled after two auto accidents.  It turns out the sheriff is a very good friend of Nathan's and a good ol' boy who's rather stupid.  Of course, they didn't have the forensics that exist today.  Later the grandmother and brother disappear and are soon found in their car in the Styx.  This is a very watery story.  The blueberry crop is almost destroyed by a torrential rainstorm at the time the granddaughter goes missing.

This is a story of vengeance by water spirits of the dead and there were times when I really got caught up in this story.  Everyone wants to see justice done, and this is what carried me along toward the end when all at once it became gruesome and gory again.  I like his style of writing and there are a couple of his other books I would like to try -- one about a haunted house, The Elementals.