REANIMATRIX - Pete Ralik

The 1920's and Robert Peaslee has returned from the War to end all wars to his hometown of Arkham. He lands a job on the local police force investigating cases that the rest of the department doesn't want to handle. Arkham, it turns out, is full of hauntings and something dark and supernatural.

One day Robert is called to a crime scene where he discovers the body of Megan Halsey - a young heiress he's met before. He'd been inexplicably drawn to her at the time, despite her troubled past. Now he becomes completely invested in solving the mystery of her death. He begins to live her life - going places she visited, meeting people she met with.  Her diary becomes a well he falls deeply into.

But before he even gets started Megan's body is missing.  Is she dead?  Is it even possible that she could be alive? What Peaslee discovers is much more than he could ever have anticipated.

I started reading this book twice before but only got a few chapters in before giving up on it.  Not because it's 'bad' but because the writing, the language is quite dense and it takes a good deal of concentration to read. This is in large part because author Pete Rawlik has done a very good job of imitating the style of H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft is not an easy-to-read author.

The book is told mostly through diary and journal entries and letters. This is not an uncommon device of course, but for my reading it took away from the 'hard-boiled' detective aspect - which is partly how this book is billed.  For the horror aspect, however, it works well.

Rawlik builds the story nicely, which is not always easy to do with letters and diary entries. Horror is hard to sustain, but this doesn't start out with horror, but rather builds (quite nicely) to something unexpected (unless you're familiar with Lovecraft, in which case you know where this will go).

One of the problems with the use of diaries and letters to tell the story, though is that I didn't get enough sense of 'voice.'  I didn't always feel like I was really reading Megan's words, or Robert's words.  This always felt one step removed or too much of the author, imitating Lovecraft, instead of the characters.

Looking for a good book? Reanimatrix by Pete Rawlik is a very good imitation of he writing style of H. P. Lovecraft, but the dense language and slowly building story makes this a challenging read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

3 stars

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Reanimatrix

author: Pete Rawlik

publisher: Night Shade

ISBN: 9781597808804

paperback, 364 pages