Customer Reviews

The Deceased

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

When I started reading the opening chapter of THE DECEASED, I couldn't tell which, if any, of the characters I was introduced to were alive or dead...or in some other state. The second chapter explains a few things about who is and isn't alive. After that, the novel goes down a vortex of violence, insanity, intensity and just plain vileness. This opus is about journeys, redemption and confronting the never-dead past. It is literate at the same time it is violent; clear as the mud some of the characters wallow in. This is not a linear point A to Point B novel. Hell no! Piccirilli serves up some great characters, tosses them a ton of plot and masterfully lets the characters deal with it all to end in a satisfying conclusion. The story is about Jacob Maelstrom, an author following in his famous father's footsteps. Both write horror books. Jacob is a survivor of a massacre at his parents' house in Stonethrow, an island unto itself. Jacob's father Isaac brought his whole family (wife, wheelchair bound brother Joseph, sister Rachel and Jacob) there to escape the fandom his writing has wrought. An attempted kidnapping of Rachel was the last straw for Isaac. Upon moving in, isolation lends a hand in turning this family onto madness. Jacob's mom is non confrontational, brother and sister are way too close to be healthy, and Jacob is a loner trying to fit in. He's the Third, as his siblings call him, the youngest of three children. Also in the plot is the agent of both writers, Bob Wakely, his assistant (and concubine) Lisa. Katie is Lisa's sister, a huge Maelstrom devotee and, oh yeah, just out from the mental hospital ('The Ding-a-ling wing', as Picirrilli puts it). Katie is in the hospital for a horrific event in her past that she can't come to terms with. The house on Stonethrow is a place with a checkered history to say the least. 10 years ago the Maelstroms were victims of Rachel's ax attack...decapitating all except Jacob, who survived in a closet. Rachel's final act was her suicide by the same blade. Jacob has been renting out the house these past years to other writers of horror who live in the house for inspiration. Nobody's ever really heard the whole story, so on the anniversary, Jacob goes back to face his past. Katie is taken to the house by Lisa. Katie and Jacob share traumatic pasts and, therefore, a strong bond. How strong is the test. Seems Jacob's family is coming back for the last surviving member of their clan. Piccirilli's knack for making all of this believable is genius. On one page he talks about Lisa's pregnancy, the next part deals with Jacob seeing someone familiar in a closet. The author switches back and forth between reality and insanity. Add in a touch of Alice In Wonderland-like fantasy and you have wood nymphs, aquatic angels, imaginary (or real) friends and enemies. I mean when is a turtle just a turtle? Overall the narrative shook me up emotionally and physically, dealing with real issues in a literate and intelligent way, not condescendingly or shallowly. Tom Piccirilli, with THE DECEASED, has added to his legacy as the genre's most intense, vivid and satisfying writers in the horror/dark mystery genre. Highest of recommendations.

Great supernatural story involving two women who decide to visit a writer one night in his haunted home. His family all had their heads chopped off by his sister and they're not too pleased about it. This book creeped me out so much in parts that I could only read it during the day...who knew a wheelchair could be that darn scary? I should also add that this is by far one of the best written horror novels I've ever come across. Not your average 'meat and potatoes' writing style that one usually find in the genre. I highly recommend this book...horror at its best!

The Deceased is one of the strangest and emotionally charged horror novels I've ever read. One thread of the story is simplistic on the surface: a man goes back to his childhood home on the ten year anniversary of the murders of his family. But even before he gets there the plot twists and coils like mad and we meet up with ghosts, insanity, ax killings, a strange breed of creatures living in the deep woods, and other assorted weirdness. Piccirilli manages to blend all these elements into a convincing tale of terror, deathless love, and possible redemption. Definitely give it a shot.

An avid reader of ghost stories, I plucked this book off the shelf as soon as I laid eyes on it. The Deceased is a combination of horror and fantasy, intertwined with mystery. Jacob Maelstrom is a popular slash and gore writer who is haunted by the gruesome murder/suice of his entire family. The story begins at a local neighborhood park, where Jacob sits and compares his work with that of his late father, Isaac. On the tenth anniversary of the slaying, Jacob sets out for the family's island home to work out the tragedy. What he finds instead are the strange creatures, whom he calls the muses, and Elizabeth, a sick little girl who calls to him from his bedroom closet. Then there is the family--brother Joseph, who hates him for no apparent reason; Rachel, who killed her family but spared Jacob; and Mom, a weak wallflower who seems resigned to her fate. In the meantime, Lisa (his agent/mentor's secretary/lover) and her fragile best friend, Katie, follow Jacob out to the house. Lisa hopes this trip will save Katie, an avid fan of Jacob's, from committing suicide over the loss of her lover and unborn child. Unbeknownst to them, the chaos has already begun inside the Maelstrom house. The women soon find out that something is heinously wrong with the house and Jacob. Both try to fight their way out as Jacob learns some new truths about his relationship with his father shortly before the climax. The Deceased is a highly original and should not be missed by horror fans.

Where Piccirilli's HEXES proved supernatural horror does not have to rely upon special effects, THE DECEASED shows us a haunted house tale can be so much more than thumping at windows and doors. In this case, the protagonist's sister has murdered their entire family with an axe and kills herself, leaving him the only survivor. And if that weren't enough to start, their heads have never been found. Years pass before he finally returns home to face the ghosts of his cruel and twisted family, and the strange half animal/half human "muses" he has left behind. Piccirilli weaves a superb, dark atmosphere for the book and his narrative flow easily grabs the reader. Highly recommended.

Tom Piccirilli is one horror author that makes me scratch my head in confusion. This author has won at least one Bram Stoker Award, the plum prize of those authors who write horror, for one of his novels. "The Deceased" is the third Piccirilli novel I have read, with the other two being "The Night Class" and the entertaining western "Grave Men." Of these three books, "The Deceased" ranks as the worst. Come to think of it, I wasn't that impressed by "The Night Class," either. The western novel was quite amusing, but if this author's other horror novels resemble "The Deceased" in any way, shape, or form, we are all in a lot of trouble. "The Deceased" is an unmitigated mess of a story, with a murky plot that becomes nearly impenetrable by the time the reader reaches the conclusion.

"The Deceased" is a tale about a horror writer named Jacob Maelstrom. Jacob's father Isaac was an enormously influential and famous horror author, well remembered and still beloved by legions of fans despite the fact that he died horribly some years ago. Several people wrote books about the strange incident that claimed the lives of not only Jacob's father but the rest of his family as well. Jacob survived, somehow, and still carries the memories of the day his sister took an axe and killed the family. Now, Jacob feels a call to return to the scene of the crime, to the Maelstrom mansion where it all began. In the course of Jacob's immersion into the memories of the house, he encounters the ghosts of his insane sister Rachel and his sadistic, wheelchair bound brother Joseph, along with images of his mother and father. Out in the forests and ponds surrounding the property, Jacob recalls the "muses," some type of supernatural creatures roaming around the grounds. If the dangers of the Maelstrom house threatened only Jacob, perhaps everything would turn out for the best, but two unexpected visitors in the form of a depressed graduate student and the girlfriend of Isaac Maelstrom's agent turn up at the house. This appearance by two outsiders means that other people will face the terror of Jacob's trip down memory lane.

I simply do not understand the appeal Piccirilli's books have for many horror fans. That's not to say that I think every aspect of this book fails: once again, Piccirilli does create several engrossing scenes, especially the opening experience with the fan and the flashback to a day Jacob, Rachel, and Joseph spent at a pond on the mansion's grounds. These scenes work, and work well, because Piccirilli definitely possesses a gift for the English language. Yes, this guy can write better than most authors you will come across in this genre. Regrettably, the stylistic acumen of the author fails to make up for the poorly constructed organizational structure and uninspiring characters found throughout "The Deceased." This story simply fails to satisfy on nearly every level, and its hallucinatory sequences, piled one on top of another, bored me. I don't mind reading books or watching films that like to mess with the readers head a bit, but anything that attempts to do so needs to contain something concrete for the reader to use as a touchstone. I don't think this story provides such a touchstone. Instead, the story zooms off the tracks every few pages.

I am not ready to give up on Piccirilli just yet. I know he can write stories with coherent structures (like "Grave Men"), and I am hoping some of his other horror novels contain just such an organized plot. I am beginning to think they don't, though, if many of the reviews I have recently read are true. In a way, Tom Piccirilli's horror novels remind me of Douglas Clegg, another writer who uses surrealism in his books. The only difference between the two is that Clegg makes the hallucinatory scenes secondary to his plot. With Clegg, you might scratch your head a few times, but at least you know where you are going. Piccirilli, as far as I can see, throws out everything EXCEPT confusing weirdness. "Hexes" or "A Lower Deep" will be up next for me, but not anytime soon. I need to take a break from this author's horror novels for a spell.

_The Deceased_ is a delightfully twisted little novel.

The main character is a horror novelist, following in the footsteps of his father, a novelist with a cultlike following. When our protagonist was a young child his family was brutally murdered by his axe-wielding older sister. Or so it seems...

The surprising, twisting plot is part of the joy of this novel so I won't give any more of it away here. Suffice it to say that this is an excellent novel, one that I enjoyed more than I have any other novel in quite some time.

It's horrific but literary as well. Explores the relationship in a really disturbed family. Highly recommended.

A very strange, haunting novel. In The Deceased, Tom Piccirilli manages to unfurl a story that is part fantasy, part horror, part examination of a writer's motives and responsibilities to his fans, himself, and his creations.

On the anniversary of his family's massacre, an author returns to his isolated childhood home to investigate the muddled truth of what occurred there when he was a child. In the process he faces the ghosts of his family, animal people in a forest that he created through supernatural forces, and a little girl who may or may not merely be a character in his father's final novel.

The creative force of an artist takes on a life of its own in The Deceased, which is a wonderfully offbeat, chilling, and provocative story. Highly recommended.

This is the third novel by Tom Piccirilli that I've read and I've got to say that whether you love his work or hate it, you've got to admit that he is an original. His fluid poetic voice will either grab you by the heartstrings or push you out of the narrative. This isn't commercial fiction but a unique blending of fantasy, horror, and mainstream literature. The Deceased follows a young man's emotional derailment as he returns to the childhood home where his entire family was murdered. He has the power to create a new life form out in the nearby forest, and as his creations and creativity distort his mind, so distorts the world around him. Caught up in all this oddity are two women with plenty of problems of their own, who might either fall prey to this new strange world or help our protagonist fight against it. Piccirilli sweeps the reader into a constantly changing landscape where dreams and heartache, history and heartache all fuse into one. A wonderfully odd novel.

A creamy read that is fast-paced but deeply provocative. This is heady stuff that Piccirilli writes about. You won't just find the usual running from the serial killer fare, but a dark fantasy that's bent on bursting free from the envelope. A young man returns home to the mansion where his sister murdered the entire family and herself, leaving him the only survivor. In a series of flashbacks that play out side by side with the present situation, the main character Jacob Maelstrom is something like Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim from Slaughter-House Five. he moves back and forth, talking with the living and the dead, existing in the past and the present, and dealing with a little girl who might have been murdered or might not exist at all. Try it out, it'll give you something to think about.