The Lebo Coven

June 28, 2004
A young man battles dark forces overwhelming his home, family and friends in this formulaic supernatural thriller. When Barry Riggs returns to Aikens Mill, his Virginia hometown, he finds his family house ransacked and the word LEBO scrawled in blood on its walls. His estranged younger brother, Matt, is missing, and the locals suspect it's the work of Ren, a drifter and supposed Satanist whom Matt rented rooms to. By luck, Barry reconnects with old acquaintance Jennifer Brand, whose recent delvings into the Kabbalah help them discover that the house is a locus for an evil far worse than the satanic. Though Rainey gives his horrors an original cosmic twist, he depends heavily on large dollops of arcane occult lore, which drop thuddingly into conversations and make the characters speaking it all sound alike. A few twists and a well-executed climax raise this novel above more routine horror fare.