Books: The Beast of Nightfall Lodge by S.A. Sidor (2019)

“When Egyptologist Rom Hardy receives a strange letter from his old friend, the bounty-hunting sniper Rex McTroy, he finds himself drawn into a chilling mystery. In the mountains of New Mexico, a bloodthirsty creature is on the loose, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Now, a wealthy big game hunter has offered a staggering reward for its capture, and Rom’s patron – the headstrong and brilliant Evangeline Waterston – has signed the team up for the challenge. Awaiting them are blizzards, cold-blooded trappers, remorseless hunters, a mad doctor, wild animals and a monster so fearsome and terrifying, it must be a legend come to life.”

The Beast of Nightfall Lodge is S.A. Sidor’s follow up to Fury From the Tomb and retains much of the tone and pacing of the first book. It’s less an Indiana Jones/The Mummy adventure as Fury was and more a homage to Lovecraftian horror and typical Western tropes thrown in for good measure. But what is retained is the easily acceptance of the supernatural in 1890 (and while I know the era was not that enlightened, but it was still a time of great belief in religion and it seems a lot of people don't blink an eye at what is going on in a small town in New Mexico) and a narrator who continues to be more of a killjoy than even a hero. I mean Rom Hardy can be good, even fun, but he can also be an annoyingly boring character who might’ve been serviced better if the book was not told from a first-person perspective. Then again, had Sidor wrote the book in that narrative format, Hardy could’ve come off as bumbling oaf - a know it all nerd who could give Steve Urkel a run for his money). So, it’s a fine line here, and while the books stumbles with him (and why was Evangeline regulated to a supporting character?), the rest is a kind of fun, dark Scooby Doo adventure (does the dog really talk, or does Rom imagine it?), with a somewhat predictable plot and a sad ending.