No Rest for the Wicked is a twisting thriller winding through a small town with a history of trauma and an obsession with Halloween. The protagonist is forced to confront her past when she returns to a hometown she fled twenty years prior and her cloudy memories, mixed with an unfolding mystery, lend a lot of suspense to the story. What starts as a kidnapping case becomes so much more, resulting in a well-plotted story filled with compelling characters. I was pulled in instantly and couldn’t put it down.

To start, I felt like the wide range of story elements always kept me second guessing what kind of story I was reading. There’s the mystery of the protagonist’s hidden past, filled with heartbreaking trauma and infuriating questions that have no answers. There’s the intrigue of a kidnapping that has no leads and the trail of related events that start popping up around town. There’s the humdrum feel of the town itself, filled with small town Halloween charm on the verge of its biggest holiday of the year. Combine all of that with family drama and a few different character perspectives and you’ve got a multi-faceted story that always keeps you guessing. 

The character focused narrative relies on multiple protagonists to tell the story, giving us a mix of semi-unreliable narrators to follow. Each was well developed with some kind of issue that hindered them when trying to solve the case. The main character, Dolores, has a sort of amnesia from the trauma that led to her getting out of town, and it makes it difficult for her to follow the thread of events until its almost too late. The FBI agents and cops all have some kind of flaw that keeps them from seeing the details clearly, ranging from cockiness to anger at federal intervention to past experiences that come back to haunt them. They all blend well together, making for a great story.

Finally, the setting was an interesting choice for me. The small town is Halloween central, a tourist trap where thousands of people flock to experience the perfect small town Halloween. It’s easy to imagine and all the more compelling when you realize the town has a rotten past filled with questionable people and horrifying events that have been glossed over to add to the town’s ‘spooky’ narrative. The hordes of feral cats running around everywhere was a strange addition, one that remained a mystery to me. Overall, it’s spooky enough to get the job done.