by Michael Laimo

Johnny Petrie's strange childhood turns stranger when, on his eighteenth birthday, he receives a letter that sends his mom to the hospital and causes his dad to hang himself. The letter informs Johnny that he's sole heir to the two-million dollar Conroy estate. Johnny had no idea he was a Conroy, but he soon learns more than he wishes to know. His real father, the Reverend Benjamin Conroy, was convinced he had found the secret of eternal immortality and salvation for his family and, by extension, the world. A code in the Bible told him that immortality lies not through Jesus only, but also the Egyptian god Osiris. Conroy worked out a ritual he believed would achieve this through the sacrifice of his family, right down to Baby Bryan. But the ritual went awry, and Baby Bryan is miraculously spared his family's fate. Seventeen years later, Johnny Petrie comes face to face with what his father was and what he did in his quest for this supposedly higher truth. He also learns he is the final piece of the puzzle in more ways than one.

Laimo deftly follows Johnny in the present and Conroy seventeen years prior, rendering sections of a day in the life of each in rich detail. Rather than confuse, the double timeline allows Laimo to slowly reveal Benjamin Conroy's sanctimonious hypocrisy and, eventually, his madness. Laimo tightens the tension with the slow and excruciating build-up of the botched ritual and what happens afterwards, leading to an unexpectedly Grand Guignol present-day ending that'll have you in mind of Romero. One very minor quibble is that a couple pivotal characters arrive on the scene a bit late in the proceedings, but otherwise this is one hot read. The Conroy ritual is beautifully described, each word exactly where it belongs. The down-to-the-minute timing is exquisitely painful, as is Conroy's twisted plan for his family.

Michael Laimo's previous novels (Sleepwalker, Atmosphere, Deep in the Darkness, etc.) have all been extremely accomplished and entertaining, but here he reaches a new apex for suspense and horror. Dead Souls strikes hard and stakes its ground as a completely original, absolutely nightmarish journey into soul-sucking madness. The overused term "page-turner" might have been coined to describe Dead Souls.