In Dead Light, Mike Pace crafts a fast-paced thriller where everyday light turns malevolent, raining death down upon at a sleepy college town on the shores of Chesapeake Bay.
Milton’s Paradise Lost reminds us that Lucifer was the angel, the master of light, and used light for Godly purposes. Therefore, we can presume that when he was banished to hell, he would manipulate light for malevolent purposes.
Lucifer’s Light invades ordinary sources – a flashing cell phone, a microwave clock, a movie screen or a simple table lamp – turning these familiar items into instruments of death. The flashing Light hypnotizes its victims, illuminating an incident in their past for which they felt guilt, then magnifies that guilt a thousand times. The weight of that guilt becomes unbearable and the targets, overcome with remorse, take their own lives, thus relinquishing their souls to hell forever.
Unaware of the true perpetrator, Estin Booker, the affable small town sheriff, teams up with Anna Tucci, a tough-as-nails homicide detective visiting from Baltimore, to determine whether the suicides are legitimate or the work of a serial killer. Their investigation leads them to a mysterious loner who has been seen near the location of several suicides. Suspicious of the loner, they search his house and find evidence linking him to the deaths. They also discover a small red box.
The loner explains the box, over 2000 years old, found its way from the shores of the Jordan River to the New World aboard a 17th Century slave ship. The loner claims the box once held Lucifer’s Light, but the Light recently escaped from the box and is, in fact, the source of the deaths. He attempts to convince them they only have days to capture this evil Light; if they fail, Satan, sated from souls collected by the Light, may have gained sufficient power to undo God’s six-day creation of the Earth. Estin and Anna think the loner is crazy.
They pursue other leads, including new suspects and mass hypnosis theories. Meanwhile, as the Light continues to harvest souls for its master, the clock ticks down to world destruction. When ultimately confronted with the undeniable truth, Estin and Anna must confront their own guilt from sins of the past in an epic, near-hopeless battle to save the world.
About the Author: Mike Pace is a former federal prosecutor and inner-city public school teacher who earned a bachelor’s in fine arts from the University of Illinois and a law degree from Georgetown University, where he served on the editorial board of the Law Journal. He currently lives in southern Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay with his wife Anne and their two dogs, Blueberry and Scout.
You can pick up a copy on Amazon here: Dead Light
