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Book Review: Counted with the Dead by Peter O’Keefe

Counted With the Dead by Peter O'Keefe cover art

Counted with the Dead by Peter O’Keefe

Grendel Press, 2024

ISBN: 978-1960534118

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

Set in the 1990s, Jack Killeen, working in the dirty Detroit underbelly, is the mob’s hired gun. He hates his job.and wants to make a change. Victor Moravian, art collector and businessman, will be his last kill. However, things do not go as Jack plans. A mad doctor has created a monster using body parts from Jack’s victims, and animates it with Victor’s brain. Jack, accompanied by his brother Marty, has to stop the monster Jack is partially responsible for unleashing in the city.

 

DeRon is the assistant to Dr. Drettmann, a mad doctor, working in a secret lab. He initially believes in the professor’s mission, but a mishap with an experimental surgery on DeRon’s mangled leg, and Drettmann’s new project, have him questioning his role in everything.

 

After Victor’s transformation into the beast he is, he retains his own memories as well as of those parts of whom he is composed. Angry and lost when he escapes the lab, he leaves a trail of blood and gore wherever he goes. Lonely, and with memories of the love of his life, he goes back to the doctor and demands a mate.

 

Marlene, beautiful Marlene, was the love of both Victor and Jack’s lives. Married to Victor, she has an affair with Jack, who refuses to tell her the truth about Victor’s disappearance. She inevitably becomes a target of the beast’s desire for a bride. He takes vengeance on the other women in Jack’s life to obtain other pieces for his new companion.

 

This was a surprisingly fast-paced story. To be honest, I was not sure that a modern Frankenstein story would meld well with a mobster crime story, sprinkled with a bit of tech horror and body horror, but O’Keefe made it work. The action reads very much like it is would be easily adapted for the big screen. The characters, while not particularly likeable, are distinct and memorable. Something that I found particularly interesting was the way Jack put together a team to confront the beast. It felt more like the building of an adventuring party. In fact, other works that did this well, such as Lord of the Rings, are mentioned in tongue-in-cheek ways. O’Keefe does an amazing job with making Detroit looming and oppressive at the same time. This will be a good read for those looking for a different interpretation of the typical Frankenstein story. However, readers who do not deal with animal death to approach this with extreme caution, as it does happen in this book. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on May 21, 2025 by , Reply

Book Review: Ghost Girls and Rabbits by Cassondra Windwalker

Ghost Girls and Rabbits by Cassondra Windwalker

Polymath Press, 2025

ISBN: 9781961827097

Available: ebook, paperback

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

 

Noni Begay, a young Athabascan woman, has just been elected as the United States senator for Alaska when she disappears. Her campaign manager, Mary Nelson, has a daughter, Ryska, who has been missing for 10 years, and thinks Noni’s disappearance, as a beautiful, popular politician from the powerful Athabascan tribe, can be used to bring renewed attention to Ryska’s case. She is certain Ryska is still alive, and as Noni’s campaign manager and friend she is able to keep media attention on them. But keeping Ryska’s story in the public eye means Noni can’t reappear until Ryska is found. Alaska’s a big state, though, and Mary has a cabin in the woods that is off the beaten track.

 

Mary tortures Noni, starting with burial alive, to prevent her from attempting escape, and dehumanizes her by thinking of her only as “the seal pup”.. Mary is compartmentalizing, still publicly playing the part of  Noni’s grieving friend and campaign manager and working as a political operative, but that can’t last forever, and slowly she crumbles inside, with only the “seal pup” and life in the cabin to comfort her. I’m not sure why Mary wasn’t questioned more after Noni’s disappearance or how she could have gone back and forth so frequently without notice. But maybe the lack of treatment for mental illness or support for grieving parents, and even the lack of notice of her trips back and forth, illustrate the invisibility of indigenous women.

 

Noni’s struggle to preserve her identity and sanity, and even plan for the future in the midst of isolation, uncertainty, terror, and Mary’s erratic behavior, plays with storytelling, imagination, language, and mythology. Windwalker’s poetic writing flows here.

 

Windwalker approached the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls from an unexpected angle, with one indigenous woman kidnapping and tormenting another to draw attention, as typically the crimes against these women are committed by white men. :This is not an easy read– unreliable narrators force the reader to question what’s going on, and it does get very dark at times– but it has moments of magic as well.  Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on May 5, 2025 by , Reply

Book Review: Lost to Dune Road by Kara Thomas

Cover art for Lost to Dune Road by Kara Thomaso

Lost to Dune Road by Kara Thomas

Thomas and Mercer, 2024

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1662509568

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

 

First as a journalist, and then as an investigator, Natalee Ellerin hunts monsters. When writing about the unsolved murder of a young woman leads to the end of her career, she blames herself for mistakes. However, years later, when another young woman is on life support after being attacked in circumstances that are linked to that earlier murder, Natalee knows she must follow through and find out what is going on in an elite enclave on Long Island.

 

The monsters in Lost to Dune Road by Kara Thomas are predators, crooked policemen, and wealthy men who think they are above the law.  This gripping story is part crime novel, detective mystery, psychological thriller, and even a love story. In the end, the point will be to find the guilty, but it will take more than just a nose for a good story and the right questions for Natalee to expose the pattern of sordid crimes against women that are occurring with regularity. Natalee is savvy, sharp, and vulnerable, and her deep sense of loyalty and need to see justice realized compel her risk her safety and the relationships that are precious to her.

 

Kara Thomas has created a long cast of characters who are believable and complex. The action in this novel is fast-paced with new characters and subplots popping up with satisfying frequency without illogical twists thrown in merely for effect.  Readers will also find that the novel brings to mind the real-life horrors from current news, like Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking. These are the crimes, victims, and perpetrators that are hidden in plain sight and so, in some ways, the most terrifying to discover.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Posted on April 30, 2024 by , Reply
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