‘Covenant’ – John Everson

Fictional characters who are journalists; if there’s one thing you can count on it’s that these nosy types won’t stop ferreting around until they’ve dug up every single last scrap of information that they can get their hands on. If my boss told me not to do something my attitude would be, “Woohoo! Less work for me…” but if an editor tells a journalist to stay away from a story then all of a sudden it’s about freedom of speech and the public just have to know etc…
Sometimes this kind of attitude can backfire spectacularly as reporter Joe Kieran is about to find out in John Everson’s 2004 Bram Stoker award winning novel…
Joe Kieran was a top reporter in Chicago until a story he ran ended up sending his girlfriend to jail (talk about dumb luck). Now he’s covering stories for a local paper in the sleepy coastal town of Terrel’s Peak and his nose for a story is about to land him in more trouble than he bargained for… The cliffs on the coast have been the site of a number of deaths over the years, these have been brushed off as suicides and tragic accidents but the facts that these deaths occur on the same day each year suggest that something else is going on. Joe is about to find out the horrifying secret behind the deaths and what is waiting for him in the caves below the cliffs…
‘Covenant’ weighs in at only 296 pages long (making it an ideal ‘commuter book’!) but Everson seems to find plenty of room to spice things up with chills and horror. It’s basically a tale of what people will do to fulfil a deal with the devil and how they live with this afterwards. What this means for the reader is a mixture of some really nasty supernatural occurrences (demons work off their boredom in some sick ways!) and the dark side of humanity. Sometimes it’s hard to work out which is worse… There are also moments of genuine tension where you don’t know what is going to happen next, just that it could be anything (such as the events following Joe’s pot-holing expedition)…
For such a gripping read it’s somewhat unfortunate that it’s the prospect of a sequel that dampens the feel of ‘Covenant’. I loved the way the book finished, really open ended with a feeling that whatever happened next things were looking bleak for Joe Kiernan. When I realised the book included a taster of the sequel, ‘Sacrifice’, it felt that the whole point of ‘Covenant’s’ ending had been taken away. While I’m interested to see what happens next the deliciously creepy feeling I had, at the end of ‘Covenant’, was taken away and replaced with the standard ‘oh, so everything does work out in the end’ feeling. I wonder if the move into mass market paperback meant that a sequel had to be written. I also felt that, for a town where everyone was trying to dissuade Joe from his investigation, nothing was done to show why everyone else (apart from that one particular group whom the story is about) was trying to hide secrets. Where the police involved more than was let on? Why did the editor initially try to downplay James’ ‘suicide’? None of this is elaborated on which left me feeling like I hadn’t been told the whole story. Having said that though, I guess there’s only so much that you can fit into 296 pages!
While it’s plain to see why ‘Covenant’ took the Bram Stoker award it also felt like the story had been handled in such a way that the greater impact was lost. Still interested to see what happens next though…

Seven and Three Quarters out of Ten