Detective Cole Bryant is called to a murder scene. When he gets there, he's greeted with a goat's head staring back at him from within the bowels of the victim. This sets forth a string of unnatural deaths among the teenagers that live in the shadow of the cursed North Mountain.

As he tries to solve the case, Cole comes closer to the dark side where temptation, sex and sinful ways lure him into the world of a family whose backwoods morals aren't a symptom of a forgotten age in time but the consequence of a centuries old pact made with the devil himself.

Written in the first person perspective, the story follows Cole trying to solve this murder in a town where everything seems to be covered up.

The author Kristy Tallman is from Virginia and she captures the small, backwater town mentality perfectly. In these area, people have their own method of doing things, their own way of life, and things are shrouded in secrecy. It's no different in this book.

A good portion of the book focuses on his personal life and his crush for the local ME. We also share in his frustration with all of the dead ends that he receives in the case. While it seems that the case will never get solved, we eventually learn of all the secrets that the family is hiding. We also learn the price for those secrets.

I thought that this started a little slow. This is primarily due to character development and plot supposition, but once this was out of the way the book really started to pick up. The author does a really good job at portraying real people, and that character interaction is what makes this book good.

What makes the book great is the descriptions of the debauchery. Reading this book is like walking down a path in the forest. It starts out sunny and clear, but as you go walk farther it gets darker and darker. The book's sex scenes are very erotic and very well written that they pull you right in and almost have you wanting more.

While there's a lot of good, the only bad that I can think of is that there are some minor punctuation errors a few typos. Fortunately this can be overlooked easily.

This book would make a really good movie. It also covers themes ranging from Satanism, incest, lust, greed, and necrophilia (sort of). There are parts that get really bizarre, but make you want to read more.

7 out of 10