One of my favorite short stories as a child was The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. His ability to place me, a child with no experience of murder or madness, in the mind of his main character introduced me to the power of good narration. I’m hardly alone in my love of Poe – he is a literary legend so when T. Kingfisher (as she discusses in her afterward) revisited The Fall of the House of Usher as an adult, her only disappointment was in its length. It’s a short story and she wanted more – so she wrote it herself.   

Many of the recent modern gothic books I’ve read (most notably Mexican Gothic and The Death of Jane Lawrence) were entertaining and interesting reads with plenty of strengths, but they didn’t fully cast a gothic spell on me. What Moves the Dead struck every nerve. Although it’s longer than the (very) brief Poe tale, it’s still a slim, quick volume that can be read in one sitting. There’s plenty of darkness and spinetingling descriptions. (The scene in the library where the group tries to autopsy an undying rabbit stands out because it was the right amount of physical gore and psychological shock.) But the real reason this book stood out to me (and has led me to suggest it to roughly everyone I know) was the main character, Officer Alex Easton.

By the final pages I was ready to face a monster with Alex and then talk about it at the pub afterwards. Alex made me realize how long it’s been since I adored a main character through and through – not just an interesting character, or a challenging character, or a lovable character but a combination of all three.

I don’t want to say too much else because if you have even the slightest inkling you’d enjoy it just go read it! Also don’t be intimidated if you aren’t revisiting a passion for Poe like Kingfisher (or me) – you don’t need to know about Poe to enjoy the novel. You just need to love a creepy story involving late night sleepwalking, deathbeds, reanimated corpses, a mysterious monster, and a thoroughly charming narrator.

What more could you possibly ask for in less than 200 pages?