Halfway House
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Halfway House…a place shrouded in mystery…standing shunned and ignored…yet seeming to devour the souls of everyone who dies in San Pedro.
Bobby Dupree…an epileptic loner from a Memphis orphanage who is on a journey to find out if he truly is…the son of the King of Rock and Roll. When Bobby’s quest becomes entwined with an old surf bum and his estranged daughter, the 8th Street Angels, and a dicey porn director, he discovers that Los Angeles holds more opportunities and dangers than he could have imagined. Discovering he's at ground zero to a seventy-year-old spiritual curse, all the chaotic events in Bobby's life begin to circle back to the inscrutable force of the Halfway House…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This routine attempt at a moralistic ghost story is haunted by missed opportunities. Epileptic orphan Bobby Dupree searches Southern California for his birthright, Elvis's Double Platinum Award for Heartbreak Hotel. His friendship with surfer bum Kanga and Kanga's daughter, Laurie, entangles him with legendary Halfway House, a vortex where the living and dead commune. As souls are pulled into the house, a tragic accident forces Bobby to fight malefic forces for Kanga's sanity. Ochse (SEAL Team 666) has an evident talent for striking plotting and imagery, but the action isn't anchored by sympathetic characters or believable supernaturalism. Little effort is spent instilling belief in this scattered parade of lost souls, demonic Wardens, and a rather drab "haunted" house. Bobby, Kanga, and Laurie are caricatures, not characters, and without the aid of suspended disbelief, disparate story elements dissolve into parody. "To have never loved was far worse than to have loved and lost," Bobby reflects. Such simplistic moralizing belongs in the limbo to which Halfway House's lost souls are consigned.
