What Grows From the Dead by Dave Dobson
About What Grows From the Dead
Morris Drummond is not at his best. Well, he hasn't been at his best for a while now. But having just suffered two crushing losses, he's almost at rock bottom, which for him means driving ride-share in his mom's beat up Chevy, drowning his sorrows in tacos and spray cheese, and avoiding anything related to ambition, self-care, or laundry.
Morris is about to learn that he didn't even know what rock bottom looked like, and it's all thanks to his mom. A secret she left behind comes to light, and that brings down a lot of unwanted attention on Morris, the kind that looks likely to send him either to prison or to the hereafter. Blood and treachery from long ago rise to the surface, and Morris has only his lawyer Annie, who's an old high school friend, and a few unexpected allies to call on as he tries to figure out what his mom was up to and why so many people want him out of the picture.
A humorous mystery with elements of suspense and thrillers, What Grows From the Dead is set in present-day small-town North Carolina, not far from the mysterious Uwharrie Forest.
Content warnings: Coarse language throughout; some gun violence (not graphic).
About the Excerpt
Mindy came back carrying a cord. “Whoa, you got the gun out?”
“It’s a weapon, apparently.”
“What?”
“Never mind. It’s not loaded. There aren’t any bullets.” I handed her Mom’s phone. “Does the cord fit this?”
“Yup. Might be a while until it’s charged enough to turn on.” She plugged the cord into the phone and found an outlet by the couch.
I thought for a moment. “It might have a password, or a pattern or something. Or face recognition.” That would be awkward, not to mention difficult to manage without an exhumation. I wondered how long post-mortem you could still unlock your phone.
“It’s too old for face, I think. You can disable passwords with special software. My friend Daron has done it with old phones people give him. They could do it at the cell phone store, I think, or maybe there’s something we could download. I can ask him.”
I looked at her. “I am not sure I want you part of this.”
Eye roll #6. “Dad, it’s not like you’re committing a crime or anything. You got a phone from your mom, which means it’s yours now, and we’re working to see if there’s anything on it. Family pictures, messages we need to know about, emails we should respond to. Maybe she’s got somebody on Tinder she had a hot fling with and then ghosted, and he’s all sad now.”
“Gross, Mindy. And I don’t think it’s technically ghosting if you died.”
“Seems like that’s the most ghosting of all.”
I waited a moment, hoping this topic would go away. “Let’s get some food. We can’t just eat pancakes all the time. I don’t want to stunt your growth.” I smiled.
“Ouch, Dad. Seriously. 10th percentile here. It’s a sensitive subject.” She made a face at me. “Can I get candy? And chips?”
“Sure, as long as you pick a vegetable too.” Eye roll #7. I looked down at the gun. “Let me put this someplace not obvious. I think I need a license or something, don’t I?” I picked up the gun and put the magazine back in.
“Maybe. I’ll look it up on the way to the store, once we’re out of this stupid dead zone you live in. Let me get my shoes.” She headed off for the front door.
After some thought, I stowed the gun in the bottom drawer of the dresser, under Mom’s jewelry box. I should probably get a gun safe, although with no bullets, it seemed not so urgent. Better still, I could just get rid of the thing. I had no interest in owning one, family heirloom or no. But I wanted to know what was up with the phone first, and how it might be connected.
Dammit, Mom. What were you involved with?
About the Review
Warning: Choose carefully your location before beginning What Grows From the Dead. It is known to cause audible chuckling, chortling, guffawing, and even hooting on occasion.
Author Dave Dobson has created a wonderful setting for What Grows From the Dead in Fairwater, North Carolina, and filled it with realistic characters (well, mostly, except for Vampire Steve) who are well rounded and well written. Morris Drummond is a great protagonist. His humorous dialog and thoughts make What Grows From the Dead a delight to read. I enjoyed getting to know him, daughter Mindy, attorney/old friend Annie, and his above-mentioned unexpected allies.
The action in What Grows From the Dead starts slowly as the reader gets to know Morris, as well as the reasons and depths of his despair. Once Morris begins his plummet beyond rock bottom, however, I couldn't put the book down until I reached the end. The final chapter is fabulous. Spoiler: Things finally start to look up for Morris.
I love What Grows From the Dead, and I think you will too. Highly recommended. Five Kitties!
About the Author Guest Post
I’m here to talk about my mystery book, but I have been publishing books for about five years now, and I’ve branched out from fantasy, where I started, to sci fi, and more recently, to mysteries and thrillers. I love to read in all these genres, but writing them really reveals what different ingredients are needed for each.
With my fantasy novels, most of which are actually also mysteries, I feel like I have the most freedom. I can create new worlds, new cultures, new populations. I can mess with reality using magic and weird forces. I can create people who are very different from people in the real world, and give them all kinds of interesting skills and quirks. I do a lot of research to try to understand how people lived with less technology and in a feudal society, and I try to represent that to the extent that it fits into the story. Medicine and laundry are two areas where I’ve done a deep dive, along with different styles of fighting, because fighting is central to lots of stories.
Sci-fi has a bit more constraint. You need to respect the rules of physics and reality, or at least most of them, and, more than with fantasy, you need to justify where you’re breaking these rules and how. Sci-fi readers can be more unhappy when your worlds don’t make sense or violate basic laws. With the sci-fi books, and with the scientific elements of my thriller, I’ve enlisted physicist and biologist friends to check my work and make sure what I’m saying is at least in the neighborhood of plausibility. There’s also a kind of common lingo with sci-fi that fans know and accept, some of it real, some of it sci-fi - nanites, wormholes, that kind of thing.
With my novels set in the real world, there is, paradoxically, a sense of relief but also a sense of even more responsibility to get things right. The relief comes from not having to invent or explain everything about the world. Readers understand cars and cell phones and cultural references and how people in the modern world live their lives, so you don’t have to explain the society your characters live in at the same time as you’re trying to tell a story. That can make the storytelling much more focused, because you don’t have to digress to explain who the Knights of the Imperial Boot are, or how mineral magic works, or how space warp travel works and is possible. These mysteries and thrillers can be leaner, more efficient, and hopefully more relatable right at the start.
The responsibility part of writing in the modern world is that people can almost instantly tell if you’re getting something wrong. You can’t just make up how something like a hospital or a police station works, because your readers, or at least some of them, will find your errors and be unhappy about them. I should know - as a geologist, I am often annoyed when shows get things like lava and quicksand and Earth history wrong.
That responsibility is a duty, but it’s also an opportunity. When starting to write Got Trouble, I made my main character, Glynnis, knowledgeable about guns, something that I wasn’t at all. That meant I had to learn and research to get that stuff right. I read up whatever I could find, and I watched a ton of videos, which helped not only with factual stuff like loading and unloading and effective range and all that, but also with a culture of gun owners that I hadn’t had much contact with. I also have a friend (and reader) who gave me some great feedback both on how the guns would work but also how somebody comfortable around them would think of them and act. I also had some friends who work in emergency departments help me with how the intake of a patient with gunshot wounds would work. When I wrote a story set on an old sailing ship, I consulted with sailors to make sure I was getting the sail names, the equipment, and the basic operation correct.
With What Grows From the Dead, I made the main character somebody who had worked as a professor, a life I know very well. But the stuff that happens to him and the things he chooses to do were not familiar at all. I needed to research how police procedure works with search warrants, arrests, defense counsel, and a county jail. I also spent a whole evening learning how to run a meth lab, something that will raise concerns if anybody’s watching my search history. With all the poisons, swords, and other questions I’ve done with the fantasy stuff (e.g. how long would it take somebody to die if stabbed in the gut?), I’m sure I must look like a seriously troubled Google user.
There is a lot that’s common to books no matter whatever genre you’re in. You need relatable characters who act believably, who make choices that fit their situation and their personality. You need the words they say to make sense, to mesh with their values and background, and to be what actual humans say. You need excitement, secrets, humor, longing, adventure, sorrow. Those are the fundamental elements to any human story, going back to tales around campfires long ago. If I do my job, then my readers will find something to relate to as they sit there in the firelight, imagining other lives and keeping warm.
About Dave Dobson
A native of Ames, Iowa, Dave loves writing, reading, boardgames, computer games, improv comedy, pizza, barbarian movies, and the cheaper end of the Taco Bell menu. Also, his wife and kids.
Dave is the author of Snood, Snoodoku, Snood Towers, and other computer games. Dave first published Snood in 1996, and it became one of the most popular shareware games of the early Internet. He's recently published some puzzle card games in the Doctor Esker's Notebook series. Dave taught geology, environmental studies, and computer programming at Guilford College for 24 years. He does improv comedy at the Idiot Box in Greensboro, North Carolina. He's also played the world's largest tuba in concert. Not that that is relevant, but it's still kinda cool.
Flames Over Frosthelm was Dave's first novel, released in 2019. He followed it a year later with Traitors Unseen and The Outcast Crown, then Daros in 2021, The Woeling Lass in 2022, and Got Trouble and Kenai in 2023. He released his first mystery novel, What Grows From the Dead, in 2024, and he's currently at work on a humorous epic fantasy novel.
