"Unfolding across a decade, and succinctly told in a gripping crime noir style, this short novel pulsates with magpie omens, music industry mafia types and mysterious murders connected to a gothic rock band as their star was on the rise."
Unfolding across a decade, and succinctly told in a gripping crime noir style, this short novel pulsates with magpie omens, music industry mafia types and mysterious murders connected to a gothic rock band as their star was on the rise. The band in question, Mortal, were on the brink of taking America by storm on a major tour when their lead singer Cal was killed during a show. Add to that the deaths of other figures connected to the band, and the disappearance of Cal’s sister, and the stage is set for an unsolved mystery of creepily gothic proportions. A mystery that also takes in the brutality of the music industry, for the members of Mortal are put into debt, and made to feel like “performing puppets making money for a corporate machine and unknown masters.” Skip forward ten years and while researching a feature on Cal, a music journalist observes magpies in the graveyard Cal’s buried in — a significant symbol of supernatural fiction, as the author points out in his foreword — and it’s not long before the journalist and her editor are found dead. After a rapid body count rise, a gnarled twist comes right at the end of this tale. While I wished some elements of this late injection of uncanniness had been laced throughout the story (magpie motif aside, it comes as something of a bolt from the blue), Mortal amounts to a compelling crime noir novella.
International Goth Rockers MORTAL disintegrate during a major tour after a series of personal tragedies and threats from a US management team infiltrated by organised crime. After their singer Cal is killed during a concert, several figures close to the band are brutally murdered in mysterious circumstances after his sister vanishes. The band complete the tour with replacement members but the murders are never solved. Ten years later a music journalist and her editor are killed whilst preparing an article on the dead singer. Has an old ghost returned again to wreak revenge and what can be done to stop it?
ALISTAIR LAVERS lives in Yorkshire and is the author of Treasure Trove (Matador, 2015) and Mystery City (Matador 2017). He has been the co-owner of an independent rock/ alternative record store chain, a nightclub manager, and started the UK's first course in Graffiti Art at Scarborough Technical College.
