These secret knights were known as the Brethren, and they hid in plain sight as truckers, bikers, cabdrivers, state troopers, RV gypsies, and others who lived or worked upon the highways and byways of America.
The Brethren returns in the latest book in R.S. Belcher’s urban fantasy Brotherhood of the Wheel series.
Hector Sinclair’s outlaw motorcycle club is leaderless and on the edge of civil war, as well as facing threats from rival clubs. Even if Heck was willing to step into his late stepfather’s shoes as leader, the Blue Jocks have always been led by a full member of the Brethren, and Heck is still only trucker Jimmie Aussapile’s squire.
Meanwhile, other members of the Brethren are trying to solve the cold case of a young woman who disappeared along a lonely stretch of highway, a woman who keeps appearing in Louisiana policewoman Lovina Marcou’s dreams. One unsolved case leads to more, to body parts left along the roads, and murders that stretch all the way back the 1930’s. And the killer appearing in Lovina’s visions is a hulking insane clown who’s prowling a Pennsylvania trailer park for more victims.
The book starts with a supremely satisfying gun battle as Jimmie, Heck, and Lovina take on a group of truly awful people. The battle is filled with a lot of the things I love about this series: snappy back-and-forth dialog, the gritty urban magic used by anyone who has some kind of supernatural power in this version of America, and best of all Heck Sinclair being an utter bad-ass every chance he gets. The bad guys are uncomplicatedly evil (to make it more fun when someone places a grenade right in their face), and the author devotes as much loving detail to the modern weaponry being used as he does to the different talismans hanging from Jimmie’s rear view mirror.
R.S. Belcher has a real skill with description for the rest of the book as well, setting perfect scenes like the simple sun-drenched beauty of a backyard barbecue, with a wife and father-in-law playing a no-holds-barred game of horseshoes with the smart-aleck biker providing the running commentary. You can almost smell the hot dogs cooking, hear the sounds of splashing and families hanging out at an impromptu trailer-park swimming pool made from three old pickup trucks filled with water, or feel the brush of waist-high grass as someone walks through a cluster of abandoned box cars. (Belcher is also still including musical cues for every scene, so it’s handy to have Youtube ready to go so you can call up whatever it is that’s playing on somebody’s radio.)
The characters have that same level of down-to-earth reality. This isn’t some cookie-cutter version of fantasy America where everyone is from the same ethnic group and orientation (with maybe one or two “tokens”). This is the real America, the one we all live in, where ancestry is a glorious mishmash of cultures, and sexuality is complicated (the sparky and devastatingly intelligent Mackenzie Leher returns to the story, and she and Lovina dance around their growing feeling for each other that of course neither of them are comfortable talking about.)
What really makes this series unique is that everything in this urban landscape is mixed with magic. Not just magic wands and incantations (although there’s some of that too), but things like variations on voodoo that use Bluetooth speakers and two-liter bottles of soda pop. There are high priestesses living in trailer parks, bar fights and biker rumbles with swords and monsters. Heck’s best friend is a werepossum (well, half werepossum on his mother’s side), and you get all the fascinating details that come from having an entire rival biker club of nothing but werefolk.
“You are one stupid son of a bitch,” Ana Mae snarled to the shooter, who was frantically pumping bullets into her, “to bring lead bullets to a werewolf fight.”
(Good lord, Ana Mae. Heck Sinclair is still my favorite character, still getting the best scenes and the best lines, but Ana Mae gives him a run for his money here. I didn’t think I could love either of them any more, but then the bit with the meth lab happened. I don’t want to give it away, so I’ll just say this: pit bulls. I can almost one hundred percent guarantee it’s not about what you think it’s about.)
“Ghosts? There are ghosts too? It’s a killer-clown-infested, HAUNTED trailer park?”
“Yeah, new kid, welcome to Weirdville.”
The combination of modern day and magic is the perfect mix for a story about lunatic clowns slaughtering innocent travelers over the course of decades (maybe centuries). Belcher really dives into the inherent creepiness about clowns, but also into the twisted kind of person who would embrace that persona when they’re “harvesting” people along the roadway. And a lot of the run-ins with serial killer clowns are told from the point of view of the newest character, twelve-year-old Ryan, which makes for some effectively terrifying scenes with having to run through the woods with something impossibly huge with a sledgehammer and a painted-on face right behind you.
The type of person who can inspire and coordinate a group of murderers like this while drawing on the still unexplained power of The Road (and possibly the newly-introduced concept of The Rail) is equally terrifying, so there’s definitely more going on than random serial killers having a little “fun”.
“I have slaughtered millions, tens of millions across the gulf of time.”
There’s real peril going on in this book, with a high body count and not everyone guaranteed a happy ending. Parts of this are going to hurt. But there’s also an intrepid group of kids trying to protect each other and their 
trailer-park home (with lots of references to Image Comics and Tolkien), and tons of brilliantly cinematic images – like werecreatures running alongside an attacking army of bikers – that make me wish someone would option this series for a TV show. And Belcher keeps giving us more reasons to come back for another book, since we still still haven’t learned everything there is to know about the Brotherhood of the Wheel (and the motivations of the people running it).
On a final note, I now have R.S. Belcher to thank for introducing me to the existence of “hobo nickels”. Do a Google image search for that sometime. Of course I needed another project like I need a hole in the head, but this seems pretty irresistible so “thanks” for that.