A compelling story of the dangers of a gang war…

Back from the Dead is a story that keeps you glued to the pages, wondering what will happen next.

A Different Story than Expected…

Take all the information you’ve just received from reading the plot description and erase it from your mind because it doesn’t matter and I’m going to explain why.

First I want to mention what I thought the book would be about based on the description. A man, Bertie, wakes with a dead man in his bed next to him and no recollection of how he got there and is thrust into rival gang war. From this I expected that the story would follow Bertie as he tries to figure out what happened, gets caught in the middle of something he has nothing to do with, and inevitably has to figure out how to get himself out of the fire. Maybe he’ll meet some people who are a part of it, and find some clues to help him get answers. Maybe he’ll uncover things even the people involved know nothing about. Tell me if that’s what you think the plot description means. Well it’s not. The plot description is a very miniscule part of this story, if anything it’s a hook before the book takes a complete detour to the real story.

The True Main Character’s…

I think the best way to explain this is with the character’s. Bertie is not the main character, he is the civilian caught in a bad situation, but if you’re expecting him to uncover what happened, he won’t. Because the book goes into a “here’s how I got here” narrative, but tells a story that Bertie really knows nothing about and never learns on his own. Basically I think if the book erased the “waking up next to a dead body” plotline which is really no more than maybe 5% of the book, it would be perfect.

The real main character’s are Al and Kris, and I want to tell you about them because these are the character’s you will spend most of your time with if you choose to read this book.

First to be introduced is Al who works for a drug gang called “The Company”. This gang has been in an ongoing war with a rival gang called “The Red Hand”. Al is loyal to his leaders, but when his mom borrows money from someone in the Red Hand, Al finds himself in a bad situation.

He can either leave his mom at their mercy, or risk being marked a traitor by The Company by paying off her debt. This is what I think should have been the real plot description. When Al was first introduced, I thought he would be a brief detour that leads back to Bertie, but Bertie was hardly in the story after that. Al is what you would expect someone who works in a drug gang, but isn’t a leader to be like, he’s someone who clearly just wants to live comfortably, but also has a short temper that is entirely connected to his own ego.

The second main character is Kris, a detective who has been hard at work trying to take down organized crime. Kris finds herself caught between her commitment to her job, and the one to her husband and son at home. She is the second character who the story follows more. Kris is career driven, someone who will spend many sleepless nights working to get the job done.

The true story is the gang war and the people involved in it, or more accurately, pulled into it because none of the main characters are leaders in these two gang’s, just people with ties to them. Truthfully it’s when the story returns to Bertie in the present that it felt a little thrown together. I wasn’t sure if the explanation made sense in line with the story, but it is over 400 pages so honestly it could just be that the information I was missing was at the very beginning and I had forgotten. Luckily as I said, the story could have easily existed without Bertie’s plot line which is why I still ended up loving this book.

A Cinematic Story…

That being said, I loved this book. I was invested in their stories. The story format felt a lot like a show with brief detours into their lives, and I would talk about them, but I feel like I would be giving too much away. The thing is that when I got really into the story, I actually forgot about Bertie. There are brief chapters that cut back to what he was doing during the events of the story, mostly as he deals with things like a lazy boss and a pushy neighbor. In those short cuts, I wanted to skim these pages to get back to Al and Kris, whoever’s turn it was to follow. The good thing is that the scenes with Bertie were still well written, I just didn’t understand their purpose.

Content Warning…

Warning because I know from reading the reviews of this book that some people are bothered by these things. There is profanity. I didn’t notice it much, but I might just be used to it from watching shows and movies with similar themes. There was one chapter that, all I’ll say so I don’t spoil anything is, it involved a man being beaten and that chapter was a shock with the detail. It’s funny to say that because I’ve watched violent movies. John Wick, Deadpool, some of the Quentin Tarantino movies, but oddly enough I don’t think I’ve ever read anything with extreme violence in it.

My Rating…

My rating for this book is four stars because I loved it, but I just can’t give five stars to it personally because the Bertie plotline just threw me off in the end and I found myself less interested when I reached it, but this is a book I can see myself reading again someday. I think another book focusing on Al would be great, not because he was a character I ended up loving, but because I was invested in his story and noticed he had potential for an interesting book outside the gang life.

Well normally I say what book I’m reading next, but I already read it. The next book I’m reading is “The Wilder Women” by Ruth Emmie Lang.

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