Book Review: "Graveyard Shift" by M.L Rio

Four years' ago now, I reviewed the debut novel If We Were Villains by M.L Rio. Now, the author has another book out titled Graveyard Shift which has all the markings of their writing. Often instead of there being one key protagonist, there is a group of main characters who all contribute to the story. After this, we have the very unlikely way in which they form alliances and friendships that almost seems a bit unrealistic - but it's fiction so it doesn't have to (and probably purposefully isn't) based in reality. Finally, there is the creeping sense of dread that underscores the novel. And so, we dive back into the world of M.L Rio, trying to work out what kind of author they will turn out to be.

First of all, we are introduced to a strange cast of night-shift workers who each have in common, a bond of insomnia and smoking. They take their smoking break in a graveyard behind a local church. I'm not going to lie to you, but I felt it a bit off that these people would walk all the way into a graveyard just to smoke and talk. Normally, night-shift workers are prone to shorter breaks and so, would take their smoking break (considering that it's night time and members of the public aren't around) closer to the building they work in. But regardless, let us pretend that they have to take it in the graveyard.

They all have different jobs and come from strange walks of life. We have a student-journalist, a bartender, a hotel receptionist, a caretaker and a ride-share driver. After coming to meet at this particular spot for some time, they eventually discover a strange something: a fresh and open grave where they seem to think there shouldn't be one. This is quite a fun way, I believe, to start a mystery opening. It feels almost nostalgic in that sense - a harkening back to a classic mystery novel from the 1950s.

Obviously, the whole insomnia storyline cannot be left in the background and so the author uses it to distort the realities of the characters. Sleep deprivation is part of the plot as some of the characters clearly know the cemetery better than others, all of them have differing functional levels when they haven't really been sleeping. Some are paranoid, some are stoic, some are panicked. It really pays off in the atmosphere of the novel to have the characters acting in different ways.

After this, we get a creeping sense of dread that of course, is part of the author's own novel autograph. Two of the characters discover that there are dead rats with weird fungal growths on them as if someone has been experimenting on them. The university nearby seems to have something to do with it, but they cannot be sure. The very nature of there being a conspiracy theory woven into what is already a mystery novel with an eerie and haunting setting is perfect for fans of the NoSleep Podcast like myself.

The novel actually unfolds over one night and they try to discover what is causing all this weirdness going on when it comes to happenings on the university campus - they make the link between the dead rats, the fungal growths, campus aggression and other oddities. As the characters dig deeper into the mystery though, there is a lot more to uncover, especially considering that one of their own might be infected. This is interspersed with the backstories and personalities of each character, creating a bit of a back-and-forth between the past and present, helping the reader to understand who these people are.

All in all, I genuinely hope there is another one of these to come from M.L Rio. It is one of those gothic mysteries that feels very current and yet, really out-there and unrealistic. There are moments where you definitely think something like this could happen but then again, there are moments where you try to doubt it will. M.L Rio leaves us with a question about our own towns and locales by the end, almost as if we are being asked about whether we know what goes on at night in the graveyards near where we live.