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Review of Conversations With Dead Serial Killers by Ashley Lister

Hello my dear friends, and welcome to the New Year. I hope 2023 is going to be a blessed, productive, and rewarding one for you. Let’s make 2023 the year of magic. And speaking of magic, there are few things more magical than a great book. Today, I am reviewing Ashley Lister’s Conversations With Dead Serial Killers, a black as night horror-comedy with layers of Dantean symbolism to boot.

I’ve written previously that one can tell the merits of an author’s work often by the first line alone. If what I’ve said is true, and not just pretension on my part, then Lister’s work is clearly up there with the greats, because his opening line is an absolute humdinger:

“The thing that few people appreciated about Ed Gein was his skill as a seamstress.”

That pretty much sets the razor-sharp, blackly comic, and morally grey tone of Conversations With Dead Serial Killers.

Stylistically, Ashley Lister reads like grimdark Terry Pratchett. He shares Pratchett’s flare for comedic timing (which is exceptionally difficult to pull off in prose), as well as Pratchett’s ability to marry the perfect character to the perfect environment to generate organic hilarity. However, unlike Pratchett, Lister is also a master of gut-wrenching body horror, who has taken more than a few tips out of Clive Barker’s handbook. As a result, you have an interesting juxtaposition of laugh-out-loud humour and scenes that will remain indelibly imprinted on your mind’s eye for their sheer visceral horror.

The premise of Conversations With Dead Serial Killers is a stroke of genius. Derek and Clive are two brothers working in business together. Derek is a charlatan medium who does live performances, communicating with dead loved ones. Clive is his “behind the scenes” guy who drip feeds him researched information to make the cold readings sound authentic. However, Clive is also a serial killer (don’t worry, we find this out in chapter one, so it’s not a major spoiler). And not only this, but Derek is about to encounter his first real spirit, who has come back to the land of the living to set Derek straight and help him stop his brother.

Clive is a copycat killer. In other words, he emulates the works of his “personal heroes”, the famous serial killers of the past. He’s an obsessive who’s memorised the name, deeds, and dates of virtually every serial killer across the globe who ever lived. The sheer amount of work and research Lister has put into Clive’s hobby is quite frightening; as a horror author with an obligatory interest in serial killers I considered myself fairly well read on the subject, but Lister not only displays an encyclopedic knowledge of the most infamous serial killers (through the mouthpiece of Clive) but also of killers so obscure you wonder how deeply and darkly he had to delve to acquire such knowledge.

Needless to say, I was hooked from page one. Lister expertly sketches out the two brothers’ more-than-shady characters but also provides compelling insights into why they are the way they are. Perhaps one of the most innovative strokes of brilliance in this is Clive’s motivation: which is simply that the process of brutally murdering people gives him pleasure. Rather than glamorising Clive by trying to make him seem deep, philosophical, or complex, Lister hits home with the simple and ugly truth: most killers are not particularly interesting people, nor particularly complex. Yet, because Clive’s heinous (and primitive) acts are juxtaposed with Derek’s far more complex moral greyness and the spirit Sam’s running commentary, Lister’s story is anything but simplistic. There are times we feel immensely sorry for Derek. Yes, he’d a fraudster and philanderer of the lowest order. Yes, he’s morally bankrupt. And yes, we suspect there is more he’s not letting on. But, he’s also an intelligent underdog battling his environment, and we can’t help but sympathise with his plight.

Perhaps one of the most interesting threads in the book is Derek’s “coming to terms” with the existence of the supernatural. This is done through his encounter with the ghost / spirit, Sam, who also plagues Derek with dreams in which he descends through the circles of Dante’s hell—a place Sam assures Derek he will end up if he doesn’t change his ways. If you’re getting A Christmas Carol, or perhaps even more accurately Bill Murray's Scrooged, vibes from this, you’re not far off. And as is certainly the case in Charles Dicken’s masterpiece, there is an argument to be made that Sam represents Derek’s conscience, perhaps even his super-ego. There are moments in the book where Sam is actually able to “control” Derek and force him to admit things—and expose truths—that he otherwise would never have done or been able to do. I had to wonder at these times whether Lister were not ever-so-subtly using the supernatural device as a metaphor for the human tendency to externalise and compartmentalise our psyche. In this way, we have the full trifecta. Clive represents Derek’s id, his base urges. Derek even confesses that at times he’s found thoughts of violence vaguely arousing, but it’s a precipice from which he’s never leapt, more for lack of courage than moral compunction. Sam is his super ego, as we’ve already established, trying to morally reform him. And Derek himself is the ego lurking in the middle, a morally grey specimen torn between two polarities of psychic force. I’m not suggesting this is the de facto interpretation of Lister’s work, but great writing stimulates deeper thinking, and Conversations With Dead Serial Killers is undoubtedly great writing: intellectually razor sharp, thought-provoking, and passionate too.

If I have one criticism of Conversations With Dead Serial Killers it’s that it ends quite abruptly (in other words, I wanted more!). A startling revelation comes to light, and the novel then ends before I fully had time to digest its import or meaning. I also think that the big softie in me was looking to see more of a transformation in Derek. This isn’t really a criticism, more a matter of personal taste. I’m a sucker for a big redemption arc, and what we get here is perhaps grittier and some would say more real, which is very fitting given the tone of the book. As a last thought, I honestly would love to read a sequel to Conversations With Dead Serial Killers. I think Derek and Sam in particular have a lot more story in them. That’s how you know a book is not just an intellectual creation, but inspired and inspiring. Lister has created something unique, not a genre-hybrid but a stylistic chimera, and I can’t wait to read more of his work.

You can purchase Conversations With Dead Serial Killers here:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon CA

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Review of Flesh Rehearsal by Brian Bowyer

Flesh Rehearsal is undoubtedly a work of dark genius. I say this knowing full well the word genius is frequently overused in contemporary discourse, and often awarded to work that is simply shocking or experimental, as though this were the only barometer of worth. However, Brian Bowyer’s novel is the real deal, a morbid beast of a book that explores existential questions such as what happens when we die, that comments on modern culture and our obsession with violence and sex, and, most surprisingly of all, shows how true love can stand in the face of darkness.

I often start my reviews by saying there is so much to unpack that it’s hard to know where to begin, but this is especially true of Brian Bowyer’s novel. His style is economic, which doesn’t mean that Bowyer doesn’t occasionally flex his poetic muscles for a passage of wonderful (or horrifying) description, but ultimately his preference seems to be cutting the bone—pun fully intended. This means that whilst the novel is a lean three hundred and sixty pages, more happens in the first fifty than in most trilogies.

One of the great distinguishing trademarks of the Russian novelists, particularly Tolstoy, was their use of action. Tolstoy’s prose is full of verbs, of doing, of movement. This creates a sense that the characters are dynamic and alive. Yes, there is introspection, but even the introspection feels active somehow. It’s as though all the characters and even places are caught in a kind of eternal stream, a ceaseless motion. Indeed, Tolstoy actively comments on this at times, calling this ceaseless movement “God”. Bowyer’s Flesh Rehearsal is similarly active. His verb tenses are almost never passive. All his characters are constantly alive and in motion, which gives the narrative an unstoppable momentum. Once I was hooked into the characters, and got a sense of who they were, I couldn’t stop reading.

This is a nice segue into the characters, who are—not to put too fine a point on it—fucking bananas. Firstly, there’s Gretchen and her sister Abby (a sly nod to Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism or pure coincidence?), who have suffered a lifetime of abuse at the hands of their father. These are arguably the most grounded characters in the book. We sympathise with their plight and we want the best for them. But we also recognise that, due to their upbringing, there’s a darkness in them too. And this darkness is expressed in strangely theatrical soliloquies about the nature of black holes, and death, and evil. In another book, these might feel out of place, but Bowyer’s masterstroke is really his setting, a setting that contextualises these surreal moments and makes them feel earned.

Dean Koontz once observed that, “I can forgive a writer a lot if they can wield a warp and weft of mood”. Flesh Rehearsal oozes mood. Every page is laden with Gothic dread. Though the novel is set in America, and the main action of the plot takes place in L. A., it is not the L.A. you can visit, it is the secret “dark side of the moon”, the side hidden from the conscious mind, an underbelly blacker than sin and certainly magical. Though Flesh Rehearsal is grounded in our world and real suffering and emotions, it is also unashamedly mysterious and supernatural. Bowyer taps into the sense that all of us, even staunch atheists, have had, that there is a world beyond our own just out of reach, and this life is just a “flesh rehearsal” for it. Occasionally, this world encroaches upon our own, and sometimes it drives men and women insane with what it reveals.

The strange characters inhabiting this dark fantasyland therefore feel like they are in their natural habitat. Out of the six main characters, four of them turn out to be either murderers or serial killers. The majority of these reveals aren’t big narrative revelations, by the way, it’s just part and parcel of living in this deeply fucked up world. One of the characters may or may not be gifted with superhuman powers—such as unnaturally long life and supernatural strength—as a result of appeasing the “gods of death”. Another is a prize-fighter who specialises in death-matches. But she also has a sensitive side and writes graphic novels.

Several of these characters are in a heavy metal band called Noctourniquet.

Let that name sink in.

As you’re hopefully beginning to realise, there’s little I can really do to prepare you for reading this book. It’s an experience as much as a narrative, a headlong plunge into abyssal black waters from which you may not emerge the same as when you went in. But having said that it’s an experience, the narrative in the Flesh Rehearsal is incredibly strong, governed as it is by the characters and their desires. Boiled down to its barest, barest parts, the book might be said to be a love-story. It’s girl meets girl, both of them damaged, but each of them capable of healing the other. The sweetness of this love-story is, I think, the secret to the book’s success, for without it the darkness of the world would surely overwhelm us.

And speaking of darkness, the second major component of the book is a thread that is deftly woven throughout the novel of a serial killer called The Lobotomiser killing women across L.A.. As I’ve already mentioned, there are several serial killers in this book, and we follow quite a few of them, but The Lobotomiser is distinguished from the others for the sheer awfulness of his murders and vile desecrations. Some scenes in this book will turn your stomach and make you nauseous—you have been warned.

The Lobotomiser is the king of the killers, and L. A. is his playground. We start with a very distant perspective on him: rumours and news reports, gossip and glimpses, but slowly we move closer and closer until we finally realise who The Lobotomiser is. The way the revelation is handled is sheer brilliance—Bowyer gives us just enough to know, to work it out for ourselves, and as a result it raises the hairs on the back of the neck. The novel reaches its climax when The Lobotomiser crosses paths with one of our star-crossed lovers. The tension of these concluding chapters is frankly deleterious to one’s health—we know exactly how bad it’s going to be if The Lobotomiser gets what he wants (seriously, it’s worse than you think). The stakes are real, and this makes the narrative electrifying.

But if this summed the narrative, then I still probably could not give Flesh Rehearsal the hard-earned descriptor of “genius”. There is another thread running through the narrative, however, the story of a twisted and conflicted Gollum-like man called Ludlow, and this is what takes it to the next level. Ludlow was undoubtedly my favourite character in the story: a drummer, a drug-addict, and a schizophrenic wrestling with reality itself. His chapters feature a wondrous intermixture of pitch-black humour and hair-raising terror. He is a dreadful person yet we also pity him because he does not seem to be in control (hence my comparison to Gollum, it is as if he has two sides).

Clive Barker once wrote in Imajica, “in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there [is] only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer, or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers, Death.” Ludlow, to my mind, embodies this third actor or player, this dynamic element that cannot be predicted but we know will serve some greater narrative purpose. This purpose is fully realised at the end of the book where, like Gollum, Ludlow’s evil comes to serve good—it sends chills down my spine just thinking about it. And perhaps the most spine-tingling aspect is that Ludlow finally gets to have a moment of control, where he chooses—character development at its finest. 

Whilst Flesh Rehearsal is undoubtedly gonzo—one might even say borderline bizarro—it juxtaposes hyper-violence, drug-use, serial killers, vampires, and steaming-hot lesbian erotica with moments of profound pathos. I'd like to hope the world is not as dark or full of killers as Brian Bowyer’s version of L.A., yet artists use lies to tell the truth, and we see in it a mirror of the human condition and the struggle of being alive.

Stephen King once described H. P. Lovecraft as horror’s “dark and baroque prince”. After reading Flesh Rehearsal, I have to conclude that the title has a new bearer.

You can buy Flesh Rehearsal at the links below:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon CA

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