The Red Church is Scott Nicholson's first novel, though he is not precisely a new writer -- he won the Writers of the Future Grand Prize in 1999, and published a small press short story collection last year. Which explains a lot, because THE RED CHURCH doesn't read at all like a freshman effort. It is a finely-tuned, deft story of family and faith, monsters and messiahs, set against a richly depicted background of Southern Appalachian culture.

In the interests of full disclosure (and because it helps me make a point), I should mention that I know Scott Nicholson personally. When I lived in the Appalachian mountains (an area whose metaphorical and physical terrain Nicholson knows intimately), we would occasionally get together to talk about writing and life. I've been reading his work for years, and so I had some inkling of what a pleasure his first novel would be; that he would tell me things I didn't know, and give me great enjoyment in the telling. THE RED CHURCH has been published in mass-market paperback by a house that releases a new horror novel every month, so there is some danger that this book may come and go before many readers -- those not already familiar with the quality of Nicholson's work -- realize what they're missing. With luck, this review will help bring a few of those unlucky readers into the fold.

The book begins when young Ronnie Day and his little brother Tim find a hideously wounded, dying man in the graveyard beside the red church. The church is a haunted house of worship with an infamous history, used in recent years for storage, but everyone knows it's still supernaturally active, its steeple home to the Bell Monster (a thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes), the graveyard inhabited by the mad ghost of the Hung Preacher. Having his ankle grabbed by a dying man (specifically, a drunk named Boonie Houck) is only one of Ronnie's problems. His parents are fighting, his brother is a pest, school is a hormonal hell, and despite his Sunday school teacher's exhortations, he has a hard time keeping Jesus in his heart.

But now there's a new preacher in town -- Archer McFall, a hometown boy returned, whose arrival coincides rather too neatly with Boonie's violent, inexplicable death. Archer buys the red church and turns it into the Temple of the Two Sons. Archer and his followers believe that God bore a second son, whose purpose is to undo all Jesus Christ's works -- but that's okay, because they don't think too highly of Jesus, who was full of lies about love and kindness. Archer's vision of the divine is less forgiving -- he believes that "sacrifice is the currency of God", and he demands great sacrifices from his followers.

Ronnie's mother joins Archer's congregation, which only adds to the friction between his parents, especially since she wants Ronnie and Tim to join, too. Meanwhile, more people die, and Sheriff Frank Littlefield and Detective Sergeant Sheila Storie are busy trying to figure out who killed them and why, an investigation that leads them inexorably toward Archer McFall and the red church...

The plot is finely crafted, full of surprises and thrills (along with plenty of wings, teeth, shapeshifters, revenants, and human monsters) but where Nicholson excels is with the characters and the setting, from the disturbing inner monologues of Archer's deeply creepy mother, Mama Bet, to the strange stain spreading on the floor of the red church. Nicholson's landscapes seem real, and are well-suited to the tale he has to tell. Speaking as a long-time Nicholson reader, his prose has never been better, more lucid or lyrical -- there is none of the occasional opaqueness that mars some of his more atmospheric short work. It is pleasant to think of the future he has ahead of him, of the books he will yet write. THE RED CHURCH is an auspicious beginning to what will surely be a distinguished (and more than a little frightening) career.