Dead Souls

The book was a well written guide into one man's madness. I could not put it down until the last page was turned. Horror at it's finest. You must own Dead Souls. Michael Laimo goes where Clive Barker couldn't dare, and where Stephen King left off.

Dead Souls, puts Michael Laimos in the higher ranks of horror writers, right up there with Clive Barker. This was the first of his books that I read but I am eager to get my hands on more!!!

This was my first experience with a Michael Laimo novel and since I finished reading Dead Souls, I have gone through withdrawal... so I'm going to order one of his previous novels to get my fix. :) Michael Laimo's writing is like a hybrid of Clive Barker and John Saul with more of a John Grisham voice. This means you don't just read the book, you experience it. While the novel isn't perfect, the flaws are very trivial.... so if you're the type that likes to pick a novel apart as you read it, you'll find it very easy to forgive a flaw when you come across it. If you like horror stories with a supernatural/occult theme, this is a great read and I highly recommend it. If you've never read Michael Laimo before, be prepared to come down with the same withdrawal syndrome I did (in other words, go ahead and order more than one of his novels so you don't have to wait)

In a very important sense a Michael Laimo book isn't any different than a Jodi Picoult, Anne Tyler, John Grisham or Harlan Coben book. If you don't believe in the characters, you're going to throw the novel down in disgust long before you get to the end. This is a sad fact many writers of horror fiction seem to forget. They pile up lots of bodies, deliver on the blood and gore, paint a good description of their ghost, vampire or demon, but people their pages with cardboard cutouts or wooden stick figure characters. Jeez, if you don't care about Tess Trueblood, how are you gonna be frightened when when she's chewed up by a vat of barracudas. Michael Laimo knows this, his characters seem like flesh and blood human beings, warts and all. They are believable, frighteningly so. About eighteen years ago up in Maine, a small town preacher took a shotgun to almost his entire family. He spared his infant son Bryan. He did this, because he worshiped Osiris, the Egyptian god of life, death and fertility. He believed by killing them, they'd be given eternal life and be together forever. Baby Bryan was given to a family in New York and as luck (in this case bad) would have it, his adoptive mother was as much of an off her rocker, religious zealot as his real father had been. His adoptive father is a drunk. Not the best kind of home to be raised in, especially when Mom spends the day praying away. Bryan was raised as Johnny Petrie and knows nothing of his past. Then Johnny/Bryan turns eighteen and a letter comes. He has inherited his real father's estate and it's worth a couple million bucks. This is a way out of a severely dysfunctional family for Johnny. At least that's what he thinks. He has no idea what's in store for him once he gets to Maine. It's not good, I'll tell you that. Mr. Laimo not only delivers characters who sweat and bleed real blood, but he gives them a past -- hopes, fears, a life -- without the reader ever knowing it's happening. Picoult, Tyler, Grisham and Coben do that. But Laimo goes further, he shells out the blood and gore, the horror, like a crazed painter, throwing paint on a giant canvas. If you like horror fiction, you just gotta read Michael Laimo.

After reading and loving Deep in the Darkness I wasn't quite sure what to expect...how could it be better right? This book is fantastic, an absolute page turner...thrilling and scary. The authors amazing creativity really comes through.