From the NightShade blurb page;
"Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music--broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station--is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.
Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas..."
With a hook like that, I had to read this one. I am a blues fan, a deep blues fan, and combining the ol' "bluesman sold his soul to the Devil" with Cthulhuian touches put this novel at the top of my to-be-read list for this year.
The story is not only about Bull Ingram, but also Sarah (Rheinhart) Williams. Jacobs craftily puts down two separate sub-plots until they meet and entwine at the climax, just as they should. Bull is on the hunt for a missing man, but also decides something needs to be done about Hastur. Meanwhile, Sarah - with child in tow, fleeing an abusive husband - returns to her old Southern homestead to re-establish relationships with her mother and a childhood friend. But, despite her newfound happiness there is a growing darkness around the Rheinhart plantation.
There are some great scenes along the way. The first time Bull hears a recording of Hastur, the rage and murderous impulses. Finding a dead DJ with a Hastur record still spinning on the turntable. The live performance of Hastur that drives an entire crowd mad and murderous, turning a dive bar into a horrific orgy of death and carnage.
