Voice of Our Shadow

Like Carroll's The Land of Laughs (1980): another inventive (if less complex) supernatural diversion - all about guilt and its many ever-so-friendly faces. Joseph Lennox, 25, is a free-lance writer whose early story about dead older brother Ross - a one-time king of suburban juvenile delinquents - has been transformed (by others) into a prize-winning play. But Joe still carries unexorcised guilt: teenage Ross died on the railroad tracks' third rail, you see, just when he was about to spill the sexual secret of his barely pubescent kid brother. And new, living in Vienna, Joe meets the delightfully friendly Tates, India and Paul - who suggest that there are several beings inside one, who take shifts like factory workers. ("If only," thinks Joe, "the Joe-Lennox-who-killed-his-brother crew had left. I'd be clean.") The Tates whisk Joe around Vienna; they look marvelous, wearing light summer clothing even in winter (their hands are always warm); Paul even presents a grand magic show, dressing as the mysterious invisible creature "Little Boy," flying tin crows which burst into flame and then become real birds, afire! But when India and Joe drift into an affair, Little Boy does a horrible star turn in a restaurant men's room (with Paul's face). And when Paul suddenly dies, the minister at bas funeral has the same name as Ross' funeral priest! You get the idea. So, after accelerating appearances by Paul, a creak-crick of murderous tin birds, and Joe's unsurprising skedaddle back home to N.Y. (where he'll fall in love with nice Karen), there'll be a final summons to Vienna for Joe's demonic comeuppance - at the railroad tracks, naturally. A basically predictable variation on an occult/ Twilight-Zone standby; but, with less convolution than Land of Laughs, this takes off like a tin bird - at first a bit creaky and slow, then bracingly spooky - and delivers a whammo finish for the supernaturally inclined. (Kirkus Reviews)