There’s this guy in western New York named Kelly Sedinger who has been blogging regularly since early 2002. I have no real idea how I came across Byzantium’s Shores, but it would have had to have been after I started my daily prattling in 2005. For most of the time, he used the nom de blog Jaquandor, but much less so now.
Besides his now-tempered following of the Buffalo Bills football team, his exquisite knowledge of classical music, and his odd attraction to a pie in the face, Kelly’s driving force has always been the power of the written word.
In 2014, he not only wrote but published Stardancer, which he sent to me. I enjoyed it, but have not yet gotten to the other books in the Song of Forgotten Stars Trilogy.
Yet, when I read the prologue to his supernatural thriller, The Chilling Killing Wind, I was compelled to immediately buy the book, a Christmas present from me to me.
It is about a guy named John Lazarus, who had attended the executions of two of the murderers of his wife Michelle and was about to attend the third, and final, one, that of Roy Edgar Chalmers.
Lazarus is a professor and an ex-cop, now living with his fiancee, Ellen, still negotiating the relationship vis a vis the memory of Michelle.
John isn’t expecting “closure” with Chalmers’ death, any more than he felt it after the executions of Luther Mayhew and Raoul Serrano before. He doesn’t know how little closure until a string of murders rock the small Michigan town where he lives.
I received the book on a Friday and finished it by Tuesday. It was a compelling read. I don’t read murder mysteries, but my daughter has begun watching certain TV procedurals, and without getting too much into it, he seemed to follow the form without being formulaic.
Kelly seemed to think his YA sci-fi was something my daughter would enjoy, and she might if she gave it a chance. But I gather she’ll almost certainly enjoy The Chilling Killing Wind. There are minor issues I could note, including at least one typo, but I was glad to have read this.
I’m not sure where Kelly goes from here, though. He has proposed a John Lazarus series, and I’ll be curious how that will shake out.