We travel a long way with Timmy Quinn in Stage Whispers. Through time, across oceans and other stygian bodies of water of darker importance, through years as he grows from a sensitive boy into a haunted man, and through the curtain that leads us to The Stage where we encounter vengeful and vicious beings that are more than ghosts. If anyone is thinking of reading the Timmy Quinn series, I would recommend this book for continuity and maximum impact of the story. Plus there is a great introduction and some author notes along the way.

Stage Whispers flows from act 1 (The Turtle Boy) a very emotional story of innocence lost which introduces us to Timmy Quinn; through act 2 (The Hides) in which we learn more about The Stage and that this isn’t just a ghost story---there is much more at stake; on to act 3 (Vessels) which deepens and darkens the story immensely and where we learn that the vicious creatures on the Stage are not content to be “noises off” much longer and will soon rend the curtain entirely, cross the Stage and enter our reality; and finally to act 4 (Peregrine’s Tale) which serves as a pause to Timmy’s story, and introduces us to characters who had merely been behind the scenes up to that point, and ends with a shock to set up what is sure to be a cataclysmic act 5.

This work (what do you call a series of novels that collectively have the structure of a play?) is full of emotion. The images of rivers and bodies of water that, as did the river styx, serve as bridges between the living and the dead, resonate and leave after-images after the stories are completed. These characters, especially Timmy Quinn, are well drawn and you feel for them. The reader is not just cringing from a monster; we are horrified because we are moved by the characters and are affected when they suffer, especially in Vessels when the hungry ghosts make it much more personal for Timmy. The creatures of the Stage, and their familiars, especially the carnivorous turtles, are dangerous and become more and more aggressive and free to move about the world with each act of the play as the holes in the curtain become broader. By the time we get to Vessels, Timmy’s days of the safety of being merely an unwilling spectator, much as an audience is protected from the carnage on the Stage, are gone. The curtain is falling apart and we are all about to wind up a part of the action.

Act 4, Peregrin’s Tale provides the set up, with another tragic tale of a different young boy, for what is to come. With the final bombshell at the end of act 4 we have enough tension, and enough unanswered questions, to whet our appetite for act 5—The Nemesis. As any good Shakespeare scholar knows, act 5 is the showdown and this promises to be a good one. In the meantime, I will just mill around the lobby a bit, look at a poster or two, get a drink maybe, and wait for the call that announces that the final act is about to begin.
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I loved every single story in this collection. All of them have a unique twist to the murderer that kept me wanting more. Poor Timmy, it seems everyone around him is a closeted murderer. Is there anyone in the world who isn't a killer.

My copy did not include the final novel in the series, Nemesis. I will have to get this so I can finish Timmy's story. ( )

"All the world's a stage, Timothy Quinn, but it's not the only one..."

Timothy Quinn sees dead people. He's one of the cursed few who are able to see behind the curtain between the world of the living and the stage upon which the dead act out eternity. The dead whisper deadly secrets of both worlds to him as they use him to exact vengeance upon the living.

Stage Whispers collects the first 4 Quinn novellas and one short story (used as a prologue to the first four acts of this tragedy--the final act is still in HC.)

This is a series that friends have been nagging me to read for more than 2 years and I always found a way to put them off. My bad. From the opening lines of this work, author Kealan Patrick Burke mesmerizes with prose that is densley beautiful--poetic, eerie, desperate and melancholic--as he relates the events of 11-year-old Timothy Quinn's loss-of-innocence summer vacation (The Turtle Boy); Quinn's relocation to the birth plasce of his father at 17 (The Hides); and finally to Blackrock Island off the coast of Ireland 10 years later (Vessels). Act 4 (Peregrine's Tale) is the story of Quinn's adversary's fall from innocence, setting up what is certain to be a great final act.

There's so much to love about these works. Great characterizations, moody atmosphere, true horror. The strongest of the pieces is The Turtle Boy. The Hides is a more conventional horror story, but is a terrific continuation of events. Vessels is in some ways the least successful of the bunch in that is fails to move the locale (as did the first two), but at the same time it succeeds in darkening the scope of the series to an almost unbearable point. Peregrin's Tale is the shortest and seemingly simplest of the stories, but the horrors at it's dark heart are magnified by the preceeding events.

But what runs through all these tales IS heart. It's what makes the series so compelling. Burke makes you feel every pain and every terror that plagues Timothy and his circle. Even that of his antogonists is felt by the reader and adds another level to the horror of this masterful work.

I give Stage Whispers the highest of reccomendations. ( )