Book Review : Tom Piccirilli - Loss (2010)

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"You ever wonder what it would be like if you could dig down through all the layers of polish, the paint and wax, peeling back the years, say going in a half inch deep, to a different time, and see what life here might've been like back then?"

A half-inch deep. Probably eighty years.

"I suspect you'd find a lot of the same."

Tom Piccirilli is one of these writers who can't seem to do wrong. His prose is controlled, deliberate and most important, vigorous. LOSS is my sixth Piccirilli book and I don't remember reading a single sentence that sounded like automatic writing. He is in command and never dozes at the wheel, no matter how long his stories can be. It's why he has such a booming authorial voice. I suppose you can call LOSS a novelette, a story too long to be called "short" and too short to be called a novella. Something with just enough meat around the bone to warrant standalone publication. If anything, LOSS is an artifact proving that Piccirilli can talk about whatever he wants, as long as it's in that trademark voice of his.

The narrator is a struggling mystery writer, working as a handyman in an old apartment building for strange wealthy people, who many are living on the dark side of mainstream fame. The penthouse is occupied by an estranged friend of his turned bestselling author and his wife Gabriella, whom the narrator secretly loved for many years. One day, she vanished into thin air and the narrator's life is turned upside down. Has she been murdered? Has she been swallowed by that strange, abusive house and its oddball tenants? Once the frail balance of his life is gone, the narrator dives into the heart of madness to find out what happened to Gabriella.

LOSS is sold as a noir story, but I would call it psychological horror. The traditional hardboiled themes of the outlaw (or outlawed) narrator being on an inevitable collision course with his destiny are absent. The narrator of LOSS is caught in an abusive relationship with his work, because of his low self-esteem that derived from the poor sales of his novels. The word environment, the house that Piccirilli created is, at least to me, the main character of LOSS. It's a wasteland for creative integrity inhabited by marginals and misfits (that performance artist was...too good to be spoiled), dominated by a sellout king. Also, as good psychological horror does, LOSS doesn't take you by the hand and leaves you to form your own conclusions about what you've been reading. That alone makes it successful.

I can't do this review and not mention the recent passing of author/editor extraordinaire Cort McMeel. We lost many, many stories along with this great mind. Tom Piccirilli has spent the last year or so battling illness and it's important to understand the luck we have to still have him. He is a terrific, underrated genre writer. He writes the type of book genre enthusiasts always long to discover. So help him get back to his feet and write more stories. I can't review LOSS in depth without feeling like I made you a poorly wrapped present, but it's another win-win situation. Reading it will provide you the uplifting sensation of falling into the proverbial rabbit hole. LOSS is another successful, dark, yet slightly humorous (that's a new variable) story about the nature of ghosts. I can't twist you arm into reading, but I know you would thank me if I did.

THREE STARS