The Magdalena Curse

An innocent child's soul is at stake in this well-wrought war of wills and witchcraft. When nightmare-ridden 10-year-old Adam Hunter suddenly begins speaking in tongues, Dr. Elizabeth Bancroft diagnoses the voices as those of the dead. Adam's father, Mark, is not surprised. A decade earlier, on a special ops assignment in Bolivia, he ran horribly afoul of Mrs. Mallory, a sorceress who destroyed his men and cursed his progeny. With Adam's well-being now in jeopardy, Mark has no choice but to track down and destroy the elusive Mrs. Mallory%E2%80%94a mission that compels Elizabeth to acknowledge suppressed sorcery skills handed down through her own family tree. Cottam (Dark Echo) does an excellent job of seamlessly meshing real-world and supernatural thrills, and his Mrs. Mallory is a particularly unsettling incarnation of pure evil in human form. (Aug.)