THE RESURRECTIONISTS, THE SALEM HAWLEY SERIES: BOOK 1 BY MICHAEL PATRICK HICKS - BOOK REVIEW

 
Head back to the 1780s for a gory tale of grave-robbing, racial tension and cosmic horror
 
I’ve enjoyed the fiction of Michael Patrick Hicks for a couple of years now, an author who specialises in blending fast-paced pulpy horror with a smattering of science fiction, check out Mass Hysteria or Broken Shells for some terrific examples of his work. I raise this in the opening paragraph because The Resurrectionists is a major departure from this pulp-horror blue-print. I appreciate authors stretching the boundaries of their writing and Hicks does this admirably well in this outstanding change to direction. Taking us back to the 1780s for an intriguing tale of cosmic horror and grave-robbing, set in America a few years after the country gained its independence by kicking out the British overlords.   
 
Kindle readers can always appreciate a fine work of fiction when they are cursing the author at the end. Why? The Kindle version finished with a cliff-hanger at 90% on the page clock and I would have happily carried on reading. Damnation! I want that missing 10%!!!! Bearing in mind this was a novella and is being promoted as book one in the Salem Hawley Series, it had plenty of scope to be longer as the story seemed strong enough for a full novel. However, we will have to see where Michael Patrick Hicks intends to take the series when future releases appear. He certainly has my attention and an intriguing lead character to take it forward. 
 
One of the three main leads is Sam Hawley, a black man who fought for the colonies (America) against the British and is now a free man who is drawn into a grave-robbing mystery which will continue into the second novella in the series. Set in New York, it is common place for graves, mainly of black people to be robbed, and after a friend of Sam’s spouse is dug-up he attempts to help catch the culprits. Although the Resurrectionists is a horror story it also has a strong sense of social justice and the question of race is a theme which lurks in the background.
 
This leads us to the two other main characters Jonathan Hereford and Dr Richard Bayley who are amongst the Resurrectionists of the title, both whom are very nasty pieces of work and occultists. Bayley is obsessed with pain and, specifically, with the idea that extreme pain (torture) can bring forth something otherworldly, the cosmic horror element of the story. Hereford is the perfect assistant as nobody enjoys inflicting pain like this guy. The end result is probably the most violent and graphic book Michael Patrick Hicks has written, but it never glorifies the nasty torture scenes. Chapter one opens with an unpleasant torture scene and sets the bar for what you can expect later on.
 
The very informative author end-notes reveal that the bones of the story is inspired by a real instance in 1788 where there was a protest riot against the medical profession in New York. I enjoyed Hicks’s vision of the dirty dangerous city where unwanted body-parts were randomly scattered around the city by resurrectionists attempting to feed the needs of medical and scientific advances. Of course, Sam Hawley, himself a former slave, has to tread very carefully as he lives in a white man’s world which cares little about grave robbing in black cemeteries. But when a young white woman is exhumed that is a different matter entirely…
 
There is a flash-back to an earlier battlefield where one of the occultists witnesses a weird looking smoke coming from those in great pain and close to death, which reminded me slightly of Philip Fracassi’s Shiloh where something similar happens on an American Civil War battlefield. As I said there was serious scope for this novella to be longer, but I’m sure unanswered questions will be picked up in the next instalment. Hopefully we will see more interaction between Hawley and Bailey as they pass each other in the night in this opening sequence.
 
I was interested in how the author would merge the cosmic horror element into a story about grave-robbing with the background theme of race. However, they bleed together successfully and I’m sure this aspect of the tale will play a bigger part in the next instalment. This was a very entertaining read and deserves to bring the fiction of Michael Patrick Hicks to a wider audience. 
 
4/5
 
Tony Jones
 

THE RESURRECTIONISTS, THE SALEM HAWLEY SERIES: BOOK 1 BY MICHAEL PATRICK HICKS 

 Having won his emancipation after fighting on the side of the colonies during the American Revolution, Salem Hawley is a free man. Only a handful of years after the end of British rule, Hawley finds himself drawn into a new war unlike anything he has ever seen.
New York City is on the cusp of a new revolution as the science of medicine advances, but procuring bodies for study is still illegal. Bands of resurrectionists are stealing corpses from New York cemeteries, and women of the night are disappearing from the streets, only to meet grisly ends elsewhere.
After a friend’s family is robbed from their graves, Hawley is compelled to fight back against the wave of exhumations plaguing the Black cemetery. Little does he know, the theft of bodies is key to far darker arts being performed by the resurrectionists. If successful, the work of these occultists could spell the end of the fledgling American Experiment… and the world itself.
The Resurrectionists, the first book in the Salem Hawley series, is a novella of historical cosmic horror from the author of Broken Shells and Mass Hysteria.

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