Dead Souls by Michael Laimo

"Laimo breaks new ground. He adds fascinating and frightening plausibility to his story unlike anyone else in the horror field."

A family bound together beyond even death…

Benjamin Conroy, a minister, led a secret life. He obsessed over having power in this world and the next. His obsession included taking his family with him beyond the gates of death.

Eighteen year old Johnny Petrie lives in an apartment in Manhattan with his parents. His father is a longshoreman and a drunk. His mother is a hypochondriac, religious zealot determined to save Johnny’s soul from eternal damnation.

John receives a letter telling him he has inherited an abandoned farm house and several million dollars. He realizes the inheritance—if it is real—is his key to freedom from the oppression and madness of his life. What he doesn’t know is that his inheritance will open the door to horrors he’s never imagined…

Michael Laimo sends past and present hurtling toward each other like two freight trains gathering speed to meet at the bottom of a dark valley. Dead Souls takes the reader into a world where dark magic and obsession turn reality inside out. Laimo’s use of Egyptian funeral magic and the Book of the Dead coupled with selected biblical passages form a very different picture of the afterlife. It doesn’t take long to see where this story is bound. Like a train wreck, it is nearly impossible to look away.

Dead Souls is much more than zombies and arcane rites. It plumbs the depths of obsession and religious power with a deftness that warps the fabric of reality until the story and its characters take on a life of their own. Laimo breaks new ground. He adds fascinating and frightening plausibility to his story unlike anyone else in the horror field. His subtle characterizations, sharply etched descriptions, and matter-of-fact pairings of seemingly disparate subjects are well worth the shivers and chills his tales evoke.

Reviewer: J. M. Cornwell