Book Review: ‘THE PACK: WINTER KILL’ by Mike Oliveri

As you stockpile plenty of frightening reads to prepare for the daunting winter ahead be sure to pick up Mike Oliveri’s 2009 werewolf crime thriller The Pack: Winter Kill. What better monster to keep you warm during the gloomy winter months than our fury lupine friends. Winter Kill has engaging characters, a tight plot line, non-stop action, and plenty of thrills to get the blood pumping. Winter Kill is my first Oliveri read, but he is not new to the scene. His first novel, Deadliest of the Species from Vox13 Publications, won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in 2001. He has a variety of published works from short fiction to comics and has collaborated with genre favorite Brian Keene. The Pack: Winter Kill is an ambitious start to a series with bloodcurdling potential.  

The Pack: Winter Kill picks up two years after the events of Oliveri’s comic miniseries Werewolves: Call of the Wild from Moonstone Books, but you don’t have to read that before jumping into Winter Kill. We meet Rob and his cronies, Jeff and Hank, in the wintery mountains of a small Minnesota town as they prepare to execute an arms deal with a rough group of skinheads. Normally this would be the perfect location to carry out their illegal transaction as it promises obscurity and isolation. But the town has recently attracted a large number of tourists after reports of a Bigfoot sighting circulate. The unexpected company makes this sketchy deal more complicated for the professional criminals when a couple of nosey travelers stumble on the rendezvous point and are killed before the deal even takes place! As Rob so aptly laments, “… everything went to shit.” When FBI Agent Angela Wallace and her partner Brian Shilling are called in to investigate they threaten to uncover more than a mysterious homicide as they get closer to a dangerous secret of the supernatural.

Oliveri’s nail-biting werewolf thriller Winter Kill is more thriller than straight werewolf story, but there is a lingering supernatural element throughout the plot that makes the dark cool atmosphere haunting. If you are expecting bone cracking, flesh ripping, Rick Baker inspired transformations put to print you won’t find that in Winter Kill, but this shouldn’t dissuade fans of supernatural horror fiction. There is plenty of fast-paced action, high tension standoffs, gun fights, and a suspenseful game of cat and mouse that makes this an instant page turner.

The suspense is especially effective thanks to a cast of engaging and likable characters. There are many entertaining players in the Winter Kill landscape, but we spend the majority of the book with Rob and Angela who are quick favorites. Rob tolerates much hostility from the violent skinheads to complete this arms deal at the same time trying to keep his bonehead ne’er-do-well cohorts in line. While Jeff and Hank philander about town Rob is unwavering in his focus on the task at hand and a “bad” guy you will root for. His optimism and persistence in the face of adversity makes you hope that he will come out clean on the other side, but Agent Wallace is a worthy opponent. She is tough as nails, highly intelligent, and has natural case-solving instincts. The police procedural thread of the story will keep you on the edge of your seat while Oliveri carefully peels back the layers to reveal the crux of his chilling supernatural saga to a slow and meticulous degree culminating in a final showdown of epic proportions.

Even though Winter Kill is centered on a murder mystery the supernatural presence is strong, lurking from the shadows and waiting until the reader is most vulnerable. A warning from the full moon couldn’t save us. I’m not even sure Oliveri’s unpredictable werewolves adhere to popular convention. His wolf pack will come out teeth bared and thirsting for blood. In an interesting plot device the brief passages featuring the lycanthropes take you inside the head of the wolf. You follow “the sound through the trees and over the rolling hills” catching the scent of blood in your nostrils. The infrequent retreats into the dark snow covered woods from this perspective add a poetic side to the vigorous thrills of our main storyline and bring the atmosphere of the wooded setting to life luminously. This also reminds the reader that there is more beyond the surface, beyond the murder mystery – who are these creatures, where did they come from, and how do they factor into the landscape of this small town and its denizens? These questions won’t be easily answered in the first book so we’ll have to keep reading to find out.

Despite its 2009 release date there is no better time than now to get acquainted with Oliveri’s werewolf series since Evileye Books is now taking pre-orders for a beautiful limited hardcover edition available in 2011. Of course, how do you know if you want the hardcover edition without reading it first? To promote the limited edition release Evileye Books is offering the Kindle version for almost 50% off the regular price (just $4.99!) until December 31^st. You can test drive the e-book and if you like it sign up for the limited edition hardcover. The second book due out mid 2011 is rumored to be a graphic novel. Given that Winter Kill is a follow-up to the comic miniseries Werewolves: Call of the Wild and Oliveri has a recent contribution in the Hack/Slash Trailers Part Two from Image Comics there’s no question he has the experience to bring the world of Winter Kill to life in deadly color.

Stop by Evileye Books to check out all the exciting upcoming releases and visit Mike Oliveri’s website for more information about The Pack series.