I got this book free for my Kindle (it still is free, at least as of this writing), and I have to say it’s one of the better free books I’ve downloaded. Ryne Douglas Pearson is known as an author of techno-thrillers, but, as he explains in an Author’s Note, before he started in that genre he wrote The Donzerly Light, a Dean Koontzian supernatural thriller, which didn’t sell. He remained fond of it though, and the advent of e-publishing made it possible for him to offer it to the public.

The time is the late 1990s. Jay Grady wakes, tied up and blindfolded, in a dark closet, with a cast on a broken leg. Rough hands lift him up and carry him to an interrogation room, where he is questioned by a man who does not seem to be a policeman. Jay was captured after being seen shooting a man to death. He does not deny the act. Once, we learn, he was a Wall Street celebrity, a young man with a gift for picking winning stocks, a mover on the way up. Then he suffered what looked like a psychotic break, and disappeared. For years he survived as a transient. Now here he is.

Jay hides nothing. His life was altered forever, he says, when he stopped one morning and gave money to a panhandler on Wall Street. The panhandler rewarded him with a “gift,” a form of magic that allowed him to identify rising stocks ahead of the market. The gift might almost have seemed a divine one, except that it led Jay into all the stereotypical excesses and acts of selfishness that so frequently go with being young and rich. Then, when his power changed in a terrifying way, he fled his old life. But he could not avoid a final showdown with the supernatural forces in which he’d dabbled.

I found The Donzerly Light (the title refers to a child’s misunderstanding of the line from the national anthem) an utterly fascinating story, worthy of comparison with Dean Koontz in his middle period, before he started adding explicitly Christian elements to his stories. (I might note that this book treats Christians with respect, and Jay, although he shares a motel room with an attractive woman drawn into his adventure, does not share a bed with her).

Fascinating, moving, with a genuine, page-turning mystery at its bottom, The Donzerly Light is a winner. If you have an e-book reader, I recommend it. Mild cautions for language and adult situations.

Lars Walker is the author of several published fantasy novels, the latest of which is West Oversea.