Lost Souls

Starred review from September 14, 2015
British author Patrick’s sequel to 2013’s Reviver imaginatively builds on its predecessor’s premise: that for some unknown reason, certain people, who are known as revivers, are suddenly able to talk to the recently deceased. Almost 14 years after the onset of this phenomenon, American society is divided between those who welcome it and the Afterlifers, who view it as blasphemous. The practice has been a boon to the Forensic Revival Service, which offers police a chance to ask murder victims who killed them. Forensic reviver Jonah Miller gets into trouble after he revives the son of a mixed marriage—the mother of a murdered teenager wants some final moments with him, but the victim’s father is a fervent Afterlifer. In the wake of the uproar, Jonah leaves the service, only to find himself in the midst of a serial killer investigation that may be the result of dark forces unleashed into our world by revivals of the dead. A genuine sense of menace, heart-stopping suspense, and a successful suspension of disbelief add up to one of the best paranormal thrillers of recent years. Agent: Luigi Bonomi, LBA Books (U.K.).

November 1, 2015
The second installment of the Reviver trilogy ratchets up the weird factor. The first book, 2013's Reviver, was essentially a crime story with a supernatural twist: the cop character, Jonah Miller, has the ability to speak to the recently deceased, giving them a chance to say their final words, or even to finger their killers. Here, Jonah is suspended from the police department after a revival that went bad (it wasn't his fault), and he launches himself into an investigation of something much bigger than murder: a conspiracy of astonishingly frightening proportions, led, it seems, by the dead. Like a sequel to a hit movie, this book is bigger in every way, but, unlike many sequels, it never succumbs to overkill. Patrick has a firm hand on his story, rendering it in the same straightforward, plausible writing style as he did when he introduced Jonah and the concept of reviving the dead. A fine genre-bender, satisfying for both thriller and horror/fantasy fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)