Product Description

Jim Monday’s wife Julia left him for Bernd Kohler, a slick doctor from East Germany and Jim, still in love with her, has agreed to give her half his money and half his business, but that’s not enough for Kohler, he wants it all.

Jim and his best friend attorney David Askew are crossing Second Street in Belmont Shore, the fashionable place to live in Long Beach, California, to meet with Julia and her lawyer to sign the papers, giving her what she wants, when a speeding car comes out of nowhere, bearing down on them. A mysterious voice tells Jim to jump back, he does, but David is struck by the hit and run driver and is killed.

Kohler, who had been watching from a second story window, is on the spot in an instant, proclaiming that he’s a doctor and, when he offers his help, Jim attacks him and is arrested. The police handcuff him, toss him in the back of a police cruiser and are transporting him to jail, when someone shoots at the car and now Jim knows that the hit and run that killed his friend was no accident. Someone is trying to kill him and Jim has a pretty good idea who.

Jim is languishing in a holding cell, when the mysterious voice comes back. At first he thinks he may be going crazy, but after a bit he realizes that a Maori woman named Donna Tuhiwai, held in captivity half a world away in New Zealand, is somehow communicating with him. Somehow she’s in his head, sees what he sees, feels what he feels.

But before he gets a chance to adjust to this new and unsettling development, two men, who claim to be attorneys hired by Kohler, show up outside his cell, supposedly to bail him out, but once alone in an interrogation room in the police station, Jim recognizes (through Donna the voice in his head) that one of them is the driver of the Buick that killed his friend. Jim reacts, using the element of surprise, kills them, escapes and now he’s wanted for murder.

Jim knows in his gut that Kohler is the one behind the attempts on his life. The doctor wants him dead before he divorces Julia, so that all his money will be hers before she marries him. Jim is determined to get even and to save Julia from the evil doctor, who has taken Julia to his fortress home in Northern California. And if that isn’t isn’t enough on his plate, Donna, that voice in his head, tells him that she’s afraid her captor is going to kill her. So, Jim not only has to save his wife, but he has to get on a plane as soon as possible, get to New Zealand and rescue Donna, but he’s afraid of flying.

Then there’s the Gecko beast, a creature come to life right out of Maori folklore. It’s deadly, controlled by Kohler and on Jim’s trail.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #848038 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11
• Released on: 2005-09-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 340 pages

From the Publisher
GECKO, Jack Priest’s second book, is a horror thriller that is impossible to put down. Like in RAGGED MAN his first horror novel, Mr. Priest has been inventive and creative in his choice of monsters. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, devils and demons, while always chilling to read about when painted on the page by a gifted author, they were what Mr. Priest wanted to write about in this stage of his career. Instead he wanted to chill his readers with something new. In RAGGED MAN he borrowed from Australian Aboriginal folklore, in GECKO, he borrows from the Maoris, writing a book about a gecko beast that has been unleashed in California.

The beast is controlled by Dr. Bernd Kohler, a sadistic man who uses and abuses women and crushes those that get in his way. Though evil, he’s a suave looking man and has swept wealthy real estate developer Jim Monday’s wife off her feet. Kohler wants her for Jim’s money and to get it all, Jim has to be dead. However Jim doesn’t plan on going quietly into the good night.

GECKO is a fast read in the Dean Koontz tradition and Priest, a devoted fan of Steven King, uses fear and suspense in the tradition of the master. If you’re a lover of fiction that frightens, we think you’ll love Mr. Priest’s brand of thrilling horror and if you give this one a try, we think you’ll be back for more.

Sincerely,

Bootleg Press

From the Inside Flap
Jim Monday’s wife left him for a slick German doctor named Kohler and his existence went all to hell. He suspects the doctor wants his money more than his wife and hires his best friend as his lawyer. Then his friend is killed before his eyes.

Jim attacks Kohler for the crime and is arrested. He knows the doctor did it, but has no proof and can’t get any behind bars. While in jail he learns about Donna, a woman in trouble who desperately needs to be rescued. She is the victim of the same man who has stolen his wife.

It has been a long time since his days in the violent Vietnamese jungle, a long time since he’s had to call on skills he’d put to rest. He’s rusty, but not useless.

He has to escape, has to rescue both Donna and his wife, has to save them from a horrible fate. However Kohler is as evil as Lucifer himself and calls forth an ancient horror to end Jim’s life, once and for all. Jim escapes from jail and goes after the doctor with the police hot on his trail. He knows what’s after him, but he has no idea about what’s waiting ahead.

About the Author
They couldn’t find anyone to write my Bio here, so they asked me, so I guess this bio is really a sort of autobio, maybe not even that, but it’s about me anyway.

My Name is Jack Priest and I write horror stories. You know, the kind of something-is-under-the-bed-and-it’s-a-gonna-getcha kind of story. I’m a rabid Dylan fan, but I play the Stones, Beatles and the Dead all the time too. And because I live about ten months of the year in the Caribbean on my sailboat, "Night Witch," I also play Jimmy Buffett. Believe it or not, you live on a sailboat, you play Jimmy Buffett. It’s like a rule, no not like a rule, it is a rule. I think they keel haul you if you don’t have his CDs on board, either that or they send someone up in a bosun’s chair to throw a line over the first spreader, then they hang you by the neck till dead. Good thing for me I’m a Parrot Head as well as Dead Head or I’d really be in trouble.

I used to be a singlehander, that means I sailed alone, though I’m not a loner. I joined a writer’s group in St. Martin and those guys, writers and sailors all, gave me the courage to get my stuff published. To date I’ve got three books out, all based on stories I’ve heard in my travels.

RAGGED MAN: One night out at Aires Rock this aborigine guy started talking about the Dreamtime, this is a story about something that followed an American couple home from Australia. Something from the Dreamtime. Something bad. GECKO: I picked up the idea for this one in New Zealand. The Gecko was born out of a Maori legend and it came to America mad as hell.

NIGHT WITCH: The Night Witch is a soucouyant, second Caribbean cousin to the Vampire. She wears a locket that lets her live forever. Little Carolina Coffee got a locket from her father, a sneak thief back from vacation in Trinidad. Now the Night Witch is in California because her locket has been stolen and she wants it back.

I named my boat after the Night Witch, two years before I wrote the book. She’s such a spooky character, a mix of voodoo and European folklore, very scary.

I’m in the States now for a couple months, working like a dog on my latest horror novel, THE VOYAGE OF JESSE NAZARETH. Basically Christ comes back in the body of a serial killer, but nobody believes him despite the miracles. They try him, find him guilty and it’s the gas chamber. I don’t know I might change the ending.

While sitting on a the deck of a friend’s boat in Santa Barbara, I met Sara Hackett, who I call Babe. She’s a sailor gal, she’s very sweet and I guess when I get back to the Caribbean, I won’t be singlehanding anymore.

Thanks for reading,

Jack Priest

Customer Reviews

Spellbinding
Another excellent tome by Jack Priest. When he sent me Ragged Man, Gecko and Night Witch I wasn't overjoyed. I expected to be sated on the genre before I finished the reading the first one (Ragged Man). Horror isn't my long suit, or so I thought.

Therefore, I was surprised to find myself a bit sorry when I finished Ragged Man. I immediately began Gecko and stayed up later than my usual pumpkin hour finishing it, enjoying every page.

Gecko is an imaginative, fast-paced combo of sinister supernatural beings, human crime and adventure. The characters are handled well, the monsters are entertaining and the plot is tightly woven. Jack Priest scored another home run with Gecko.

My suspicion is you'll buy another Jack Priest book if you read this one.

Giant Gecko, Very Big, Very Bad
Southern Californian real estate developer Jim Monday is a man with a woman in his head and a monster on his trail in this horror thriller that had me reading the night away. Young Donna Tuhiwai, held captive in New Zealand, leaves her body and her mind settles half a world away in Monday's head. She sees a speeding car, shouts "Jump Back." Monday hears the words in his mind, jumps back and watches in horror as his best friend is killed by a speeding Buick.

Later she makes herself known to Monday, explains to him she is trapped in his body, tells him that she has been abducted and she needs him to go to her rescue. But Monday has problems of his own. His wife has been seduced by the man who Monday believes killed his friend and he believes she too, may be being held against her will. He is determined to rescue her, then he'll tend to Donna's rescue. However there is an ancient horror in the form of a Gecko beast, a mythical monster from Maori folklore, that wants to keep jim from saving his wife and it's just as determined as Jim and it's big, mean and almost impossible to kill.

I must say I really liked this book and like I did with RAGGED MAN and NIGHT WITCH, Mr. Priest's other two horror stories, I went right to Google as soon as I finished and did a search for the Gecko or the ngarara beast that the author has chasing around after the Jim Monday in this, his second horror story. As I mentioned elsewhere, I like my monsters, vampires, werewolves and such, to be drawn as accurately as possible from the folklore and legends from wench they came. In RAGGED MAN Mr. Priest used a little too much literary license for my taste. In NIGHT WITCH he was right on. So I was curious to see how he fared here.

I got a lot of hits when I typed in the words Maori and Gecko, but they were mostly tattoo sites and the like. I tried ngarara, got a zillion hits that were no help other that I figured out that ngarara can mean either gecko, monster or maybe monster gecko, so again I e-mail Mr. Priest and asked him what gives. He got right back to me and told me that the inspiration for the bad gecko beast thing came from a story written by Mohi Ruatapu in 1876. He then directed me to several websites, but unfortunately for me, they were all in Maori, Mr. Priest's little joke on me I think. Anyway, he got me and I can only assume that he's telling the truth, so no stars taken away for cheating on the folklore for GECKO. He gets all five for this one.

Reviewed by Stephanie Sane

GECKO makes the Komodo Dragon look like a poodle.
Horror, just the way I like it. This was the first of Jack Priest's books I have read and I was not disappointed. I won't go into a narrative of what the book is about, as several others have already done that much better than I. But let me say the creature of the title is a frightening, relentless monster that leaves a very bloody, and uncompromising trail of bodies as it is unleashed upon the unsuspecting characters, who find themselves in a maelstrom of intense terror.

There is one particular element to this book which struck me as one of the most original ideas I have ever seen (or read). I won't spoil it for you except to say it concerns the "connection" between the main character Jim Monday and Donna.

Jack Priest is a fresh and imaginative voice in the world of horror literature and I will be reading his books for many years to come. I hope you will too.