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The narrator, Connor Haro, begins the story with his own suicide. He is a rock star, and finds the pressure and expectations placed on him to be too much, although he has a successful career and a young daughter.
He wakes up in a morgue, in another world very similar to our own. It is an afterlife populated by other former suicides.
The blurb about the book had led me to expect that the main thing Connor would deal with in this afterlife would be the impact of his suicide on the people he left behind. Although that does eventually come up, the bulk of the plot is not about Connor’s regrets. Nor do we find out many more details about his reasons for committing suicide. Instead, The RE-Write is a tense mystery/thriller as Connor learns to live in the dark world of the former suicides, and then begins chasing the rumors and hints that there is a way to get back to the world of the living.
Connor is a hot commodity in the afterlife, by the way. Having been a celebrity in life, he is now a celebrity (a “Royal”) among the dead as well. Many people want to use him, and no one is telling him the whole truth. This makes the mystery more exciting and scary.
The plot itself is intricate and full of surprises. It is an excellent mystery story.
The setting is brutal.
The “city” in which the former suicides live is a repellant place. It is perpetually night there, because “all the fun happens after midnight.” It is packed with nightclubs, strip clubs, and casinos, all unregulated of course. Apparently many of the residents had killed themselves in despair over not being rich enough, good-looking or powerful enough, or not able to have enough fun. Here, they can look exactly the way they always wanted to, and can become a crime boss if they are sufficiently ruthless. They can have lots of “fun,” if fun is drinking, dancing, and watching pole dancers. (No word on whether the pole dancers are having fun.)
Oh, and they can bet on suicides. The city comes equipped with banks of video screens that show people, still in the world of the living, who are contemplating suicide. The already-dead watch these with interest.
In other words, they are bored out of their minds.
Some things are not explained. For example, in this land of the dead, people still eat, sleep, drink, get drunk, and can still be injured and killed. No explanation of where they go when they are shot by the bad guys. Do they wind up back in the world of the living? In another, more … um … afterlife-like afterlife? Or do they just cease to exist?
The writing is vivid, fast-paced, and heavy on the clichés. For example, “The bullet tore into [his] chest.” Or, “Manicured, lush green grass and scattered trees and shrubbery made for a great presentation.” Or, “This place cared for no one, and the hopes and dreams of its residents crumbled to pieces in the wake of its destruction.” Occasionally there is a malapropism, such as, “… flashbulbs extenuating every curve of her perfect body.” (Should be “accentuating.”) Some might call it overwritten, but these phrases do not slow down the action if you plough through them quickly.
I did not enjoy the book much, because I don’t enjoy the underworld, nightclub setting, and because I was expecting something more psychological and/or paranormal, and what I got was basically an action-packed mystery/thriller. It wasn’t until I got to the end that I appreciated the book for the well-crafted mystery that it is. It could be much more mysterious and chilling, however, if the writing were more original. It could even give a thrill of horror, were it not for all these clichés. I give it three out of four stars.
***
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