A hurricane's relentless pounding--nonstop rain, howling wind, the cacophony of destruction--provides a terrifying backdrop as David Bell's tense Storm Warning weighs the brutality of people and nature.
Jake Powell temporarily left his wife and daughter in Ohio to deal with his emotional issues about six months ago. He ended up on a small Florida barrier island, living at Sunset Manor, a decaying apartment building targeted for demolition. Now Jake is ready to return to his family and is planning to hit the road, when a powerful hurricane is forecasted to hit the island. Jake figures he has just enough time to gather his few belongings and say goodbye to the ragtag group of residents scattered throughout his building, but his plans stall after he finds Dallas, his friend and the building's manager, murdered. Plus, Jake's wife and daughter have braved the storm to reach him. The police won't come to the island because of the storm, nor can Jake leave. When more violence occurs, Jake rounds up his neighbors as they all wonder who is targeting them and the hurricane bears down.
Jake, his wife, and their daughter work on their survival skills while they learn how to be a family again. Meanwhile, Sunset Manor becomes something of a haunted house filled with unexplained sounds and unseen squatters who occupy a portion of the building. The claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in the deteriorating building adds to Storm Warning's extreme suspense, which Bell (The Forgotten Girl; The Finalists) builds steadily as Jake and the others question what is deadlier: a killer or the hurricane? --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer