In the small town of Mattingly, Virginia, Sheriff Jake
Barnett and his wife, Kate, carry the weight of a dark secret. The secret threatens to crush them,
chaining their conscience to a burden that grows greater with each day.
Just outside of Mattingly, in Happy Hollow, an area thick
with a supernatural presense, Taylor Hathcock watches and waits. Self-appointed caretaker of the Hollow,
Hathcock has secrets of his own.
One evening when an apparent convenience store robbery leads
to a murder, their secrets threaten to spread beyond their own tortured lives
and infect the entire community.
In the supernatural thriller, The Devils Walks in Mattingly,
Jake, Kate and Taylor’s lives are intertwined by their involvement in the death
of a young man – a fellow high school classmate named Phillip McBride.
Although Phillip’s death was determined a suicide, each of
them held themselves responsible for his life ending. The struggle with guilt, fear, and anger is constant,
wrecking their lives, and the lives of those around them.
Author Billy Coffey delves deeply into the souls tormented by
the death of this young man. The
burden they each carry is palpable.
Coffey masterfully brings us into the minds of the main characters as
they try in their own twisted ways to make amends in their own souls. All the
while, supernatural forces – both good and evil, weave their way though
Mattingly – fighting for those very souls.
As a thriller, The Devil Walks in Mattingly, hooks you in
immediately. You know something
strange is going on, you know there must be a terrible secret, but Coffey plays
the plot card close to his chest.
He feeds you just enough to make you hungry for more answers. He deftly lays out the story to keep
you on the edge. It is a book that
may cause real life to take a back seat for a while.
But The Devil Walks in Mattingly is much more than a
supernatural thriller. This novel has an aching, yearning beauty to it. Coffey successfully uses the pain of
guilt and condemnation that haunt Kate, Jake, and even Taylor, as a mirror to
reflect the destruction of guilt in the lives of all humanity – and skillfully
brings the reader to that moment of redemption when the last page is turned.
A courtesy copy of The Devil Walks in Mattingly was obtained through Thomas Nelson in exchange for a fair and honest review.
