Brood X by Joshua Dysart

​I’m the first to rate and review this book. It stands to mention I mainly got it because I just recently read another book by this imprint and really enjoyed it. Gotta love a novella done right, the succinctness alone…
   I’m not familiar with Dysart. And I really should be given how busy he’s been in the world of comic books and how many of those I read. This is his venture into the picture-free (well, almost since this edition does provide some nice art vignettes) storytelling and it’s quite decent.  
   This is a slice of life sort of thing, if life is a brutally murderous proposition. Which it is for the book’s characters, a bunch of desperate down and out men who come together one brutal Indiana summer to build a bomb shelter. The story is set during the Red Scare McCarthyism era, so the bomb shelter is a reasonable proposition. The rest of the things that occur are very far from reasonable and the brood X suddenly released from its long sleep and determined to reign destruction upon all is not even the worst of it.
     It may sound horrific, but it is in fact a mystery, a murder (or murders to be exact) mystery which features classic locked space scenario, in this case a locked construction site. It isn’t technically locked, but there’s nowhere to go and no way to get there. And the body count continues to rise.
    And then there’s a nice reveal twist in the end. But the thing is…the killer, it might have been any one of these men. They are all sinners, so much so that at some juncture they seriously consider the place they find themselves in to be some sort of purgatory or a destination further south. It isn’t just that they bring all their prejudices with them, it’s their pasts…they’ve done things. Which is to say this is essentially one of those stories where terrible people do terrible things to each other for terrible reasons. As such, maybe not the most engaging or easily likable thing by nature, but interesting enough, well written and such a quick read. Maybe 60/65 minutes and worth the time. Thanks Netgalley.