Whistling Past the Graveyard by Lex H Jones

Review by Patrick R McDonough

The cover fits the bill perfectly. It looks like it would be the illustration done by monks a few centuries ago. A few crosses in a land of brush, but you know hidden graves are lurking, unseen below. Bodies beneath those. Stories within those skeletons.

I have a hard time saying this about most collections, be it from one of the top dogs in the game today or an independent author, but Jones nailed it. “Seance” is without a doubt the one that stuck out and uneased me the most. It is exactly what it sounds like, only… there are twists I’ve never seen done before in this event. It’s one thing to present a different spin on a commonly used situation within a specific genre. It’s next level stuff when you execute it so well that it conjures up images in your head as if it were unfolding live long after reading the book.

I can’t pick even one more to mention. Every single story in here is a home-freaking-run.

Jones has a way about his writing that makes it feel like you’re sitting down with a nice mug of cocoa or tea, for Uncle Lex to tell you a creepy/scary story before everyone goes to bed… with the lights on, because you’re not going to want to sleep with them out after you dive into a few of these tales. What they did to me was make me look at trees differently. Nature itself is intertwined with humankind in such grotesque manners that it’s actually kind of beautiful. Just know, that in Whistling, you can’t trust you’ll beat witness to anything beyond destruction on varying scales.