From the author of 'Gauntlet', 'In Sheep's Clothing' and 'Sea of Bones' comes the mystery/thriller 'ODDITY MANOR'.
A brief preview:
The tiny, isolated Louisiana township of Dufour Path lays claim to the singular distinction of being home to what locals refer to as ‘Oddity Manor’, a stately southern mansion located in the boggy backwoods that serves as an isolated safe-haven of sorts for an eccentric gathering of specially-endowed types once referred to as carny or sideshow freaks.
Assigned by a newly created on-line gossip-rag whose brash young editor has somehow finagled a meeting with the manor’s reclusive head-of-household, noted investigative reporter Brett ‘Frosty’ Delaney arrives at the infamous, media-dubbed House of Freaks to question the current inhabitants concerning a mysterious double-disappearance from the estate grounds nearly a decade past, now a legendary cold-case long-since written off as unsolvable.
Beneath a surging storm-cloud pregnant with distrust, disdain and barely-restrained fury, the veteran journalist will slowly unravel a sinister, single-minded agenda revealing not only the dark secret of those earlier vanishings, but a twisted charade of murderous mayhem that threatens both the sanity and survival of all present.
In a mansion overflowing with deformities of the physical kind, the most severe abnormality will often manifest itself in the form of a hopelessly twisted, psychotic mind.
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From the Author:
As a child, I was fascinated by the carny 'Freak Shows' of old, now obviously a thing of the past. I'd long had it in mind to pen a story, or perhaps series of stories, involving characters tied to that long-ago era when showcasing one's 'special endowments' for profit was the norm. It took several failed attempts through many years to come up with a plausible plotline, and I ultimately decided to set the novel in the modern 21st Century instead of the hey-day of the carnival sideshows. The research involved in correctly describing each of the character's individual deformities was extensive and, not surprisingly, fascinating. Thank heaven for the World Wide Web and its many resources.
As for the novel itself, what admittedly started out as pure exploitation gradually grew into more of a series of character studies. There will, of course, be blood. There will, of course, be conflict. There will, of course, be a series of twists and turns that I hope and pray I didn't telegraph too obviously for those who choose to peruse.
Mix in a mystery disappearance from decades earlier, a small southern town whose lawmen and townspeople would rather forget the former carny freaks inhabiting the manor ever existed, an over-eager federal agent and grizzled, burnt-out newsman desperate to regain a badly soiled reputation and you've got a stew of suspense boiling over with mystery, murder and mayhem.
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Terry Lloyd Vinson's latest thriller, 'Oddity Manor' is now on sale at Amazon.com in both the Kindle store and in paperback!!
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