Fatal Tide

Title: FATAL TIDE

Author: Lis Wiehl

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

September 2013

ISBN: 978-1-5955-4946-4

Genre: Fiction/Mystery & Detective/General

321 pages.

$26.99.

In East Salem, the elite St. Adrian’s Academy is at the nexus of a satanic apocalypse—and the fatal tide is rising.

When Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is reunited with the pagans who commissioned it, a dark prophecy begins to unfold in East Salem, beginning with a savage double-murder by hellish creatures straight out of the painting itself. The lone survivor of the attack, a seventeen-year-old Brit, finds sanctuary at Tommy Gunderson’s home—and the place is soon surrounded by demons who seem to be biding their time…but for how long?

Tommy’s pond has been contaminated with Provivilan—an insidious drug that could transform New York City’s children into an army of violence-addicted murderers. But for an occult cabal in the upper echelons of Linz Pharmaceuticals, contaminating the water supply is just part of an ancient conspiracy against all of humankind.

As the clouds gather, Tommy and Dani realize they must infiltrate Linz and St. Adrian’s to stop the dissemination of Provivilan. Even then, it could take a tangible eruption of the battle between angels and demons to save humanity from the supernatural evils that have been summoned to East Salem.

The supernatural genre has been invaded by those who don’t know what they are talking about.  And this could be a dangerous trend.  For angels and demons are real, but they don’t always go masquerading as biker buds.

Tommy’s pond has been contaminated with Provivilan – an insidious drug that could transform New York City’s children into an army of violence-addicted murderers.  But for an occult cabal in the upper echelons of Linz Pharmaceuticals, contaminating the water supply is just part of an ancient conspiracy against all of humankind.

Lis Wiehl and Pete Nelson join forces in this third installment of the East Salem series.  I have not read the previous books, and unfortunately there is a real need to have done so in order to appreciate book three, FATAL TIDE.  While the attempt has been made to “bring a reader up to speed,” I cannot call FATAL TIDE “stand-alone,” by any means. Readers will want to read Darkness Rising and Waking Hours first.

FATAL TIDE is a series of false-starts, riddled with innocuous details that could have been left on the cutting board.  Just when one is “getting into” the action, one is de-railed by a technical explanation that takes too long to understand, and too long to figure out the point the authors are trying to reach.

On a more serious note . . . the authors claim to be writing about a supernatural war between good and evil, between God and Satan, between angels and demons.  Yet the name of God is used no more than as an expression of horror, the Bible is nothing more than a book that Reese reads because he was bored, the angels ride around on Harley’s, and the demons assume physical forms of gargantuan proportions which makes them hideous to look at . . . but which humans can kill, if they bring enough firepower to bear.

In other words . . . the war between good and evil can be won by humanity alone, and salvation by grace is no longer necessary.  Hence, the dangerous trend that I referred to above.

If man can defeat Satan singlehandedly . . . why haven’t they?