Lost Echoes (2007)

''I hear and see ghosts in sounds,'' says Harry Wilkes in Joe R. Lansdale's Lost Echoes. Wilkes is a tortured guy who's doomed to silently watch murders, suicides, and beatings from the past. All it takes is a loud sound — for example, slamming the same door a murderer shut — to conjure a violent episode. When a friend's father mysteriously dies, Harry ''visits'' the scene for details that expose a twisted chain of events. Clues protrude like sore thumbs, and the overly simple characters (the dopey friend, the bitchy girlfriend) seem prepackaged for a TV movie. But quick-and-punchy chapters — about as deep as the premise — keep the narrative clipping along. B-