"Chip Armstrong's debut novel, In The Eyes, is gripping, intelligent... an entity unto itself that claws at your gut and leaves you peering over your shoulder in the dark. This is the best new work in the genre since Stephen King!"   -L.A. Banks, Best-selling author of The Vampire Huntress Legend series

UPDATED Mini-Review of “In The Eyes” by Chip Armstrong  "Moving easily through time to weave his tale, Chip Armstrong has created a portrait of a possessed city boy who by circumstances and birth lands in rural Maryland to face the demons he brought from home--the legacy of a Baltimore tragedy. One crazy old lady, by the name of Mrs. Pauling, is a presence of malevolence wrapped in a thin sleeve of kindness. Add in an ex-priest and an ex-nun who are married and living on her dead father’s farm to find yourself in the heart of a horror-tinged tale flavored with wonderful lines and nuances that belie a prejudicial perception of the genre. The story turns on a boy’s belief in haints, and our belief in the boy’s belief as he grows into a man. Religion, god and the devil are part of the macabre quilt, adding subtext, texture and tension to the story line. Armstrong captures an a piece of Baltimore that recalls the world of “The Wire” (the HBO series), and juxtaposes it with the fictional small town of Iota where our protagonist, one Bobby Banks, is an outsider even before he starts screaming or growing up."   -Rosie Dempsey, KNPR Radio essayist (www.KNPR.org), Queens University of Charlotte MFA graduate, travel and feature writer

But I will say that I'm getting into the groove – the pace you set up, the layering. The first few moments in the book are chaotic – different angles, different characters, different scenarios, different emotions are being thrown at the reader in rapid fire (probably similar to how the little guy felt things were being thrown at him at the beginning). As a reader, it was confusing to be thrust into so many things at once, but it was tantalizing too, because the questions of "what is going on?" ,"who are these people?", and "what does all this mean?" kept you wanting more. moving into the 2 nd chapter, I get the feeling of another layer being added, deepening both the characters and the plot. I feel the slow introduction of a supernatural element as you build upon the story of the "hoodoo witch" from Baltimore and the totally creepy neighbor in Iota. The scene with the rats and the snake was excellent by the way. Really good visualization and I had to read the page twice to a) be sure that what I was reading was actually what you wrote and b) to really try to imagine the satanic moment induced by this character.   -Maria York