Beyond the Shroud

It doesn’t end with death.

David Robinson’s life has taken several turns for the worse: first his daughter dies, then his marriage crumbles, and his career as a mystery writer falls apart. But after he is killed in a hit-and-run accident, David quickly learns that he will face his most harrowing challenges—as a Wraith in the Shadowlands.

Unable to contact or influence the world of the living, David’s agony is made worse when he learns that his ex-wife’s relationship with a dangerous man named Tony Ranieri has put her life at risk. Tony possesses—and is possessed by—a relic filled with such awesome powers of destruction that dark forces within the Shadowlands will stop at nothing to obtain it. They’ll even spur Tony to murder and manipulate the soul of David’s daughter to force his cooperation.

But David is already dead, and he knows that power is a blade that cuts two ways.

©1996 Paradox Interactive (P)2025 Paradox Interacative

Good story. Excellent introduction to Wraith. The narrator is flat.

Wraith was the one World of Darkness setting with real hope. It's the one where closure is possible. This is a good ghost story. The only weakness is the flat narrator for the first half. He gets some emotion and pacing late in the reading.

More New Age Than Horror

I'm a huge fan of Rick Hautala. Hopefully Crossroad Press will release more of his early titles on audio. This book was not Rick's finest hour. This claustrophobic story deals with the main character's afterlife after he's killed in an accident on the way to committing suicide. Throw in the grim reaper, assorted wraiths, a pack of hellhounds and an evil relic that once belonged to Jack the Ripper. It's a true mishmash of darkness.

The narration was all over the place. I almost stopped the book before the first 25% had played out. At the beginning I thought the book was being narrated by AI because the voice sounded so processed, unnatural and robotic. At times the narration was quite good and well-suited for the storyline. If the narrator had slowed down his narration a bit, it was would have sounded much more natural and less like it was computer-generated.