If you read enough, you sometimes come across a book that defies description. That’s a decent enough way to start a review of “Old Soul,” the new novel by Susan Barker. Described in marketing materials as “literary horror,” it’s a supernatural mystery that culminates in an old-fashioned chase scene in the Badlands of New Mexico that almost leaves readers with a sense of justice. Almost.
It’s slow at first, as you adjust to the unique style. Seven of the 15 chapters are prefaced with the word “Testimony,” and you soon piece together that the first-person narrator, Jake, is talking to people who died in a similar fashion as his childhood friend, Lena. He’s recording their stories, trying to find connections, in his hunt for the killer. How he got to this point and the things he learned along the way are revealed in subsequent chapters, with each testimony — from friends or family of victims in Japan, Germany, Wales, and Hungary — standing on their own as short stories about how a shape shifting woman entered someone’s life and left a trail of death in her wake. Interspersed with the testimonies are chapters set in New Mexico, in 2022, as the killer — she calls herself Therese in this encounter — pursues her latest victim.
