BY AGATHO of  Mysterious Matters

I love a good tagline. And The Rogue Reader‘s tagline, “Fiction from the bleeding edge,” is as good as it gets. I love a book that beats me up and leaves me bleeding. Sadly, there aren’t many of them. Too many novels (especially those with a darker edge) miss the balance, a phenomenon I call “working too hard to to be hard-boiled.”

Michael Hogan’s Burial of the Dead is one of those rare books that gets almost everything right. I discovered it a few years ago, and it has become one of my most-recommended books. I should mention that I am an editor at an independent publishing house, but I was not the editor who originally found and published Burial of the Dead. But I wish I had been.

I often think about, and sometimes blog about, the constraints of genre fiction.  On the one hand, we (publishers, that is) like books that fit into a formula that is easily marketable.  On the other hand, editors (like me) seek books that push the limits of the genre, that seek to do something new, different, bold, brave, exciting.  It’s a tough balance to pull off, and it requires a special writer.

Burial of the Dead is such a book. Fans of the genre can be assured that it falls clearly into the “mystery” category. Every single page, chapter, and part of this book is suffused with mystery.  For every question that is answered, doubts are raised and new questions arise.  We almost never know who’s lying, who’s telling the truth, and who’s allied with whom. When those questions are answered, the only result is more mystery as the reader must adjust everything s/he thought s/he knew.

The plot is, on the surface, quite simple.  A wealthy older woman, owner of a successful funeral home and rich in her own right, has died.  Was it suicide, or was she killed? Throughout the pages of Burial of the Dead, we see a parade of characters, all of whom stand to benefit in some way by the woman’s death.  There’s her long-lost great niece; her late husband’s business partner; various employees; and various policemen and politicos, all of whom have a stake in finding out what really happened, or in trying to hide the truth.  Each chapter mystifies as much as it enlightens, and the result is a book that grabs you and won’t let you go, as layers upon layers are peeled back and revealed.

The setting is Connecticut, which is deconstructed in a rather alarming and brilliant way throughout. We’re treated to a slice of life in which every character is somehow linked to other characters in sometimes subtle and always mysterious ways.  Many books, I think, can be lifted from their setting and plopped down somewhere else with little damage to the story, but I don’t think that’s the case here, which is testimony to the author’s abilities as a writer and social observer.

I do not exaggerate when I say that Burial of the Dead is one of the most provocative, intense, mysterious books I have read in the last decade. In its pages the author has perfected the art of deceit: staying three or four steps ahead of the reader at every turn. I can’t remember the last time I so thoroughly enjoyed being so thoroughly deceived.