The Dead Road

November 27, 2017
British author Patrick concludes his paranormal thriller trilogy, which began with Reviver, with an explosive finale. It’s been decades since the revivers, persons who can talk briefly to the recently deceased, discovered this gift. Now, talks with the dead are a regular part of police investigations in the U.S. Through the Forensic Revival Service, police have the chance to ask murder victims who killed them, and the results can be entered into testimony in courts. Some hire the revivers for more personal reasons, such as saying goodbye to a child killed in an automobile accident. But the revivers are also seeing a dark side to their work—in particular, the depredations of an entity known as the Beast, which infects people and consumes their souls. Forensic reviver Jonah Miller must move much of his operation underground as he and his colleagues try to find ways to defeat the Beast. A sense of urgency and danger looms over the entire world as the action builds to a harrowing showdown in Washington, D.C. Readers will be left wondering what Patrick will come up with next. Agent: Luigi Bonomi, LBA Books (U.K.).

January 1, 2018
Patrick wraps up the Reviver trilogy with this gripping horror thriller. Jonah Miller, who was instrumental in preventing a creature of darkness from unleashing unspeakable evil upon the world, is dead, as far as the world is aware. Only a few people know he's still alive, tucked away in a safe location, still recovering from the terrible events that almost destroyed the world. And there's bad news for Jonah: the evil wasn't really vanquished. Its shadows still exist, inhabiting seemingly ordinary people and waiting for a new human host to bring it into existence. Once again, Jonah will need to risk his own life to save billions. Fittingly, this third volume is the most pyrotechnically spectacular of the trilogy, the author presumably figuring that if we've bought into the idea of people called revivers who can bring the dead briefly back to life, and an evil presence who can use revivers to transfer the forces of darkness into the world, then we'll buy into whatever else he has in store for us. A fitting conclusion to a highly imaginative, mind-bending trilogy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)