The Wrong Goodbye by Chris F. Holm

When we last saw soul collector Sam Thornton at the end of Dead Harvest he’d moved Heaven, Hell and everything in between to avert the Apocalypse and save mankind. You’d think after accomplishing something of that magnitude a guy’d get a medal…or at least a day off or something. Not quite.

See, Sam seriously overstepped his bounds as one of the “devil’s mailmen” with his actions, and as a result he’s on a sort of supernatural double secret probation with both Heaven and Hell. One more screw up or act of insubordination and Sam will be shelved – his soul deposited into “a useless body decades from expiring,” alive and aware but unable to escape. Madness usually arrives before death.

So you can understand Sam’s panic when the latest soul he’s been sent to collect goes missing before he can collect it. Sam’s pretty sure he knows who took it, a fellow Collector with whom Sam had a falling out decades ago, and he sets out to reclaim the soul before the powers that be notice he’s screwed up. What Sam doesn’t initially know is that there’s a lot more riding on him getting that soul back than just his personal well-being, and by the time he realizes it Sam’s once again in the unenviable position of being the linchpin in the quasi-truce between Heaven and Hell…and the denizens of the In-Between.

Author Chris Holm set the world on fire with Dead Harvest, and now he absolutely burns it to the ground with The Wrong Goodbye. Having established the basic framework of Sam’s character and the world he inhabits in the series opener, Holm wastes no time getting down to business in the second outing, bringing his authorial alchemy to bear once again by weaving together elements of Lovecraftian horror, the classic road trip, buddy action films, and the supernatural. The action in The Wrong Goodbye unfolds at breakneck pace through a series of set pieces that are thrilling, hilarious, repulsive, intriguing, and thought-provoking, all carefully stitched together via Sam’s world-weary narrative.

Holm’s ability to switch gears from tongue-in-cheek humor to skin crawling creepiness to theological musings on a dime is a reflection of his supreme command of his craft, and his descriptions and tone setting are nothing short of sublime. From Sam’s creep through a lair for junkie demons (My heart banged out a drum roll in my chest as a massive, unseen hulk shifted noisily beside me in the darkness. But then it settled down again into what I assumed was a skim induced slumber, the awful meter of its breathing like the devil’s own metronome.), to the sound of the gatekeeper of the In-Between (Instead, he spoke, with a voice like wind through autumn leaves, a voice that seemed to come at once from everywhere and from nowhere at all.), to Sam’s wry observations while getting his ass kicked (He slammed me into the rock wall behind me. My head hit so hard I thought I’d puke. Then I did puke, so, you know, yay for being right.), Holm’s writing is pitch-perfect.

The Wrong Goodbye is presented with enough backstory included so you don’t have to have read Dead Harvest to follow the story, but you’ll appreciate it significantly more if you have. (Besides, Dead Harvest is just a killer read, so get it already if you haven’t.) Indeed, Holm’s Collector series is one of the most creative and enjoyable I’ve encountered in quite some time, and considering how seriously Holm stepped up his game from book one to book two, well, I’m betting that the forthcoming third installment, The Big Reap, is going to be a read that will require buckling-up and keeping both hands on the book at all times.

The Wrong Goodbye is available from Angry Robot Books (ISBN: 978-0857662200).