this, my first Gates novel, was a little slow at the outset, but somehow kept my ADHD attention long enough for me to start enjoying it. it's a straightforward supernatural haunting suspense thriller, with elements of Native American magic, human monsters, and the dark arts. it's worth a spooky weekend read if you love ghost stories. although nothing astounding, it's enough for me to want to look into other Gates works. Gates does spooky pretty darned good, and there are many moments that, while, all done before, offer high tension due to Gates' command of rhetoric: chases through secret tunnels and snowstorms, secrets held at a prison that was once a home for the criminally insane, and sadistic love affairs. check it out. ( )

Tim Saget is a screw-up whose lifetime of evading responsibility is about to catch up with him. In a last ditch effort to gain control of his life, he accepts a job as a guard at The New Rome Correctional Institute, also known as "The Hill". But "The Hill" wasn't always a prison. In the years gone by, it was an insane asylum with a horrible secret that destroyed all who lived there.
R. Patrick Gates' book bursts out of the gate with intense and unsettling imagery and rockets to an amazing climax that left me breathless. And the last paragraph is a haunting, satisfying conclusion, not to be missed.
THE PRISON is one of the most frightening books I've ever read, my first read by R. Patrick Gates, but definitely not my last. Run, don't walk, to buy this book! Then, curl up in an easy chair and savor the read. But be prepared to sleep with the light ON! ( )