Burning the Middle Ground by L. Andrew Cooper

BlackWyrm Publishing, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-1-61318-138-6

Availability: Paperback, eBook(Kindle)

Ronald Glassner is a successful web journalist who runs and writes a webzine called American Sane.  Publishers have been calling him to go to the next step, and    write a book. Glassner  decides to tell the story of Brian McCullough. Five years ago Brian was a small town teenager who came home from school to find that his ten-year-old sister, Fran, had murdered their parents. Then she killed herself in front of him. Brian did not speak for a year. Ronald goes to the small town of Kenning, Georgia to investigate, and get the facts firsthand for his readers. He meets with Brian, who is still living in the family home where the murders occurred. Brian seems to be a regular young man. That evening, Ronald stumbles into a pack of dogs that attack him, and he ends up in the hospital. Concurrently, a fight between two churches emerges. One is the established First Church, headed by the mysterious Reverend Michael Cox; the challenger is the New Church, run by the rebellious Jeanne Harper. Before he knows it, Ronald is caught up in the middle of small town intrigue that is more than he and his webzine readers bargained for.

This book started out well; the suspense built steadily and kept me interested. The characters were distinct; their voices were easy to separate. The pacing was good, the descriptions were adequate, the main theme, “good vs. evil” was developed nicely, and the book was well-written, with very few typographical errors.  But halfway through the story it lost me. It just didn’t work for me anymore. The religious aspects got too thick for me personally, and I just stopped caring what happened. Possibly, other readers might be more engaged.

Contains: homosexuality, profanity, adult situations

Reviewed by Aaron Fletcher