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Ghost Radio    by Leopoldo Gout Amazon.com order for
Ghost Radio
by Leopoldo Gout
Order:  USA  Can
HarperCollins, 2008 (2008)
Hardcover
* * *   Reviewed by J. A. Kaszuba Locke

Ghost Radio opens on a chilling quote from 2500 B.C. Babylon: 'Phantoms are fingerprints of the soul.' Teens Joaquin and Gabriel meet in hospital after a bizarre automobile accident kills their parents. They become friends. Gabriel has always been fascinated by sounds, from static electricity through a macabre, eclectic, melange where sounds 'merge and fuse'. Joaquin, a ham-radio operator, turns the dials, looking for good conversation - as the hams call it rag chew. Bonded by their interest in music, the two survivors form a band.

Eighteen years later, Joaquin's successful Mexican call-in radio show - that invites callers to share experiences of 'poltergeists, vampires, and the inexplicable' and 'has become an obsession among denizens of the night' - broadcasts from America. Callers all over the world jam the phone lines waiting to tell their stories. Over time, Joaquin has strange experiences of his own, but remains a skeptic. 'Yet he knows something is not right'.

Then he meets Alondra, who awoke one morning with an odd vision. A series of letters filled her mind and she wrote them down. Joaquin, who has the same letters inscribed in a body tattoo, convinces Alondra to become co-host on his radio show. One night a call comes in and a raspy voice resonates through the speakers: 'I saw death's face ... You've seen him too, Joaquin. He remembers you ... I am something special. Unlike anyone you've ever talked to before. I am Ghost Radio's beginning and end, its alpha and omega. I am a transformed and transfigured being, waiting for you in the night.'

Joaquin decides to tell the Ghost Radio audience how Gabriel died eighteen years before. He reports his out-of-body experience, looking down as the police arrived. At an abandoned - but still operable - Mexico radio station, Joaquin, Gabriel and friends had broken in to broadcast an underground radio show. A massive electrical storm left Joaquin 'a broken fragmented man, a walking cadaver'.

Ghost Radio is an eerie paranormal thriller with constant twists revolving around its cast of characters. The story is wrapped up in a whirlwind of events that push the reader to continue to the end. In addition, Gout's illustrations resemble black-and-white film clippings in muted, negative-form, providing astral projections of a parallel universe, complementary to the story. Ghost Radio is meant for more than one sitting. Though the beginning is puzzling, I found it hard to put down.

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