 A welcome return to the brutal world of Eli Carver Many horror and dark thriller fans will be delighted to hear that former mob enforcer Eli Carver returns for a second blood, guts and gunfest with Recall Night, which follows on from Manifest Recall, published back in 2018. Although this new tale has a full recap of the events in its predecessor, I would still recommend reading Manifest Recall first. I particularly enjoyed book one and although this sequel is another fast-paced bone-crunching face-smasher, it falls short of the original, but remains a (very) bloody solid read. Here is my original review of Manifest Recall for anybody interested: https://gingernutsofhorror.com/fiction-reviews/book-review-manifest-recall-by-alan-baxter In a brief recap from Manifest Recall, mob enforcer Eli Carver suffers a horrific personal tragedy and his story is told out of sequence as he looks for both redemption and revenge whilst dealing with severe mental problems. The story also has a strange supernatural touch where Eli sees the ghosts of some of his enemies, which are perhaps a reflection of his conscience, guilty of otherwise. Let us be clear: Eli Carver has his own code, but he is not exactly a good guy and is responsible for a body-count to rival John Wick. Recall Night picks up the story a couple of years later when Eli returns from his self-imposed exile in Canada and meets a young woman called Bridget on the train back to New York. The minimal plot was too slight for my taste and was not the strongest feature of this story, but as Recall Night was a lean 107-pages, only so much slaughter can be squeezed into a novella length story. In a nutshell: Eli is hired by the young woman he meets on the train and is quickly sucked into the mobster world he abandoned a couple of years earlier. As with its predecessor, there is an impressive body count with exploding heads and bones breaking as Carver turns killing into an art form. If you are looking for a deeper or more challenging read, look elsewhere, this is an entertaining equivalent of a violent 80 minute straight to video feature, and there is nothing wrong with that. Recall Night is billed as a supernatural thriller, but for the most part it is presented as a violent gangland potboiler with the supernatural angle taking a noticeable backseat. Throughout the entire story Eli sees five ghosts of players he previously killed and there is no explanation given as to why this is the case and I felt that this could have been developed in moving from book one to the sequel. I frequently found the ghosts to be annoying and felt they added little to the plot, in fact, you could be forgiven for forgetting they were ghosts at all as all they do is jabber away the background, often annoying Eli as well as distracting the reader. The main character was not the only person they irritated, add this reviewer to the list. The story does have other supernatural elements, including occult rituals which was an entertaining side-development. Because of the painful circumstances at the heart of Manifest Recall it was easy to forgive Eli for his killing rampage, this is not the case in Recall Night. This time out he simply does not command the sympathies of the reader and is presented as a relentless and robotic killing machine and is no longer as likable or as engaging as he once was, and the book suffers slightly because of it. Recall Night’s strength lies in its unrelenting action sequences, but as sequels go I did not feel it added that much to the earlier book, and if Eli Carver is to return for a trilogy the next instalment needs to be stronger otherwise the series will sag. ‘More of the same’ is not going to be enough. You can only explain heads disintegrating under shotgun blasts in so many ways before it becomes repetitive, and the story was held back by a lack of character development of Eli. There is not much to say about the bag guys, they were all cardboard cut-out anonymous, and the plot could have done with a stronger central villain to build Eli’s rage around. There are several references to Miyamoto Musahi, a famous samurai warrior from the 1600s, who penned a series of classic books about battle strategy and life as a ronin (masterless) samurai. I presume Alan Baxter was suggesting that Eli Carver was perhaps some form of modern equivalent to Musashi? I was not convinced by these illusions and I doubt Carver had the class of Musashi, but if you want to find out more about the Japanese legend, I would recommend the series of five novels written by Eiji Yoshikawa inspired by Musashi’s life which begins with The Way of the Warrior. If you think Manifest Recall and Recall Night have high body counts, forget it, wait until you read these bad boys. If you enjoyed the first book then it is highly likely you will get a kick from this second outing, it adds little to the original, but is still entertaining, particularly the action sequences which were a highlight. However, if Eli Carver is to return for a third outing some new X-Factor ingredient needs to be added into the mix and maybe we will find out more about the ghosts. Tony Jones  Back from self-imposed exile in Canada where he fled to avoid the law following the blood-stained events in Manifest Recall–the first installment of award-winning author Alan Baxter’s latest supernatural thriller series–Eli Carver returns to the states with thoughts of starting over. But an accidental encounter on a train with a mysterious woman, one he soon learns has her own dangerous past, threatens to unravel his well-intended plans. Upon their arrival in New York, the duo quickly find themselves entangled in an ongoing war between two rival crime syndicates. And with the ghosts of his own past continuing to torment him, Eli finds himself taking the darkest of turns as he’s drawn down a perilous path into a world of ancient religion and deadly occult rituals. “Eli Carver is back with a vengeance! That’s bad news for some but good news for readers. RECALL NIGHT is brutal, gritty fun and a phenomenal follow-up to MANIFEST RECALL.” — Brian Keene, author of The Complex   the heasrt and soul of horror fiction reviewsComments are closed.
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