Author Jeff Davis, writing as J.L. Davis, recently released his fourth novel, “Jonas Blackheart,” the follow up to “The 7th Jackal.”

In Jonas Blackheart, Davis introduces female heroine Emma Locke. Tension between Blackheart and Locke is electric, he says.

“I like to think of it as a stretched rubber band, ready to snap at any given moment.”

Davis describes Locke as a normal teenager, “a crush on the boy next door, giddy about the prom.” That changes when a killer murders her sister. Locke is haunted by the past and blames herself for her sister’s death. The years pass, but she remains determined to exact justice and exorcise the ghosts within her.

Blackheart, the villain from the first novel, is a narcissist with a serial killer’s mindset with the gift of being clairvoyant. Some of the book serves as a prequel to “The 7th Jackal,” and shows how Jonas came to be what he is, rising out of the ashes of a normal life.

Davis’ novels often take place in his hometown, and while this book begins in a maximum-security prison in the Nevada badlands, it is also set in Jim Thorpe.

“I guess home is where the heart is, right?” he says.

While the past few novels Davis has penned fall under the horror genre, he doesn’t consider himself a horror writer.

“My first novel, ‘Nesting with the Loons,’ was a satire. Horror conjures up images of late-night B flicks where a fiend is out there with a machete, mindlessly offing unsuspecting people. It’s where horror novels fail,” says Davis.

“The reader has a need to put themselves in the pages of the story. They want to care about what happens to the characters. Feel what they feel and root for them against the odds.”

Both “Jonas Blackheart” and “The 7th Jackal” deal with the supernatural. Davis says that as a fiction writer, that aspect just drew him in.

“I like to take extreme and life-threatening situations and make them believable for the reader,” he says. “It allows the reader to step through this kind of magic door, suspend reality, and get lost in the pages.”

As a local author, Davis frequently features people and places he knows in his books. The same applies to “Jonas Blackheart.”

“More than a few people I know have met with a grim fate in my novels,” Davis says. “For instance, I have this bad habit of destroying Soundcheck Records on Broadway in Jim Thorpe and bringing about the owners’ demise. And of course, for the rest of the people who wonder if I’m writing about them, I am.

Davis says “Jonas Blackheart” is a stand-alone, and it isn’t necessary to read “The 7th Jackal” first.

“While you’ll find answers to questions in both novels, the stories stand alone and don’t need to be read in succession. I have the series planned as a trilogy. Each story circles back to the other ones, but all of them have a solid conclusion on their own,” Davis says.

“Jonas Blackheart” is available at Amazon.com for Kindle. The paperback will be available soon, as well as an audio release on Audible and iTunes in the coming weeks.

Davis will be signing books at Soundcheck Records in Jim Thorpe and at Barnes and Noble in the near future.