Title: Lethal Control
Series: The DuPage Parish Mysteries: Book Three
Author: Gregory Ashe
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 274 Pages
Category: Horror
Rating: 5 Stars
At a Glance: One question that never goes unanswered in this author’s work is “What are the stakes?” because every scene builds toward something significant to the characters and their story. This is a fantastic series for readers who can stomach a little (a lot of) horror and love Ashe’s brand of chaos.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Werewolves. Witchcraft. Wildlife. It’s all different in the bayou.
A year after Eli and Dag survived their second encounter with a monster, things are finally going well. Really well—as far as Eli is concerned, anyway. He’s lost weight. His energy is up. His hair is on point. There are the little things, like the occasional flare-ups of temper and the urge to murder the kids down the street, but that’s just part of living by teenagers. Right?
But when Posey, a man they met the year before, shows up on their doorstep a few nights before Halloween, everything starts to go wrong. Posey needs their help: his boyfriend has disappeared. Worse, his boyfriend might have committed murder. Oh, and even worse? His boyfriend is a werewolf—a special kind native to Louisiana, known as a rougarou.
Eli and Dag begin their search for the missing rougarou, but it turns out, they’re not the only ones on the hunt: the mob, a gator-man, an implacable monster hunter, a witch, and a few bonus werewolves are all looking for him too. The rougarou, they learn, is the key to a ritual—a ceremony to summon a lwa, a powerful spirit. As time runs out, Eli and Dag must hurry to find the rougarou before the others. If they’re too late, the end of the world might be only the beginning.
Review: “Evil is not well-lit” isn’t a trope author Gregory Ashe adheres to, whether he’s writing horror or simply examining the gruesome things humans do to each other. His things-that-go-bump don’t always do so in the night but in broad daylight, illuminating the shadows we see out of the corner of the eye, the suggestions of illusion that are more substance than they are hallucination. New Orleans and the Louisiana Bayou are ripe for this brand of fiction, the ancient practice of Vodou and Hoodoo traditions as well as the singular mythologies unique to the area that lend inspiration and give depth and layers to the story of two men who, whether they like it or not (hint: they really don’t), find themselves entrenched in a world of magick, mayhem, and monsters.
And it is their—albeit unwelcome—calling to snuff out not only the evil that is, but the evil that is yet to come. Surviving it is not guaranteed.
Eli Martins and Dagobert LeBlanc epitomize the Gregory Ashe character: imperfect, vulnerable, a little bit terrified of how much they love each other, and willing to sacrifice their own happiness if it means making the other feel safe and secure. There is also humor laced throughout (Dag’s parents take unconditional love and support seriously to the nth degree in such a delightfully cringey way, and I adore them), but the cruel and savage imagery is also pure Ashe, not only to the people he creates to tell his story but to those the world considers monstrous (also, please note the abuse and death of dogs in this book).
The villain in Lethal Control is avarice and an insatiable hunger for power, embodied in a person who plays their role to shameless, merciless, corrupt perfection. Thwarting a ritual that will mean the death of a rougarou who Eli and Dag mean to save, whatever the cost, leads to a climactic scene that might have originated in the bowels of hell, for all its fiery impact. There is a clarity and precision to Ashe’s writing that allows readers to picture things we might not want to see; or rather, watch things we don’t want to watch, things that make the Horror genre so deliciously compelling to consume to abstraction.
One question that never goes unanswered in this author’s work is “What are the stakes?” Whether it’s finding a way to make peace with the past, learning how to be kinder to oneself, falling in love, solving a murder, or making a family, every scene builds toward something significant to the characters and their story. This is the end of Eli and Dag’s story. Or their beginning, depending how you look at it. This is a fantastic series for readers who can stomach a little (a lot of) horror and love Ashe’s brand of chaos.
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