Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio: Review by Gabino Iglesias
Graveyard Shift, M.L. Rio (Flatiron 978-1-250-35679-6, $16.99, 144pp, tp) September 2024. Cover by Teagan White.
Novellas sometimes feel like tasty morsels you devour in one sitting, and M.L. Rio’s Graveyard Shift demands to be read quickly. In fact, the story takes place in a single night. Between the great pacing, the brief chapters, and the growing mystery at the core of the narrative, this little book is hard to put down, so make sure you clear your schedule before digging in.
There are no places left for smokers in most campuses, so a group of five smokers who have trouble sleeping always meet a cemetery in the middle of the night, where they can smoke without bothering anybody. One cold, dark night in October, the group encounters something new: a hole. Yes, a hole apparently dug for a body…or maybe where they exhumed a corpse? As the group starts looking into the hole, they learn it’s being used by someone to get rid of dead lab rats. One of the members of the group is the editor-in-chief of the renowned, award-winning college paper, and she is always looking for a great story. As the group collaborates to get to the bottom of things – sometimes by means that dip into crime – they learn about some illegal research going on at the university that might have something to do with a string of violent events that have made the news.
This novella packs a lot into its 144 pages. Also, while its length prevents readers from getting to know each character deeply, there is enough backstory to help create empathy, especially amongst readers who have struggled – or currently struggle – with insomnia. Creepy fungi and their effect on humans and animals, a touch of dark academia, a crumbling church, and a ragtag group of friendly acquaintances trying to solve a mystery are all far from new elements, but Rio brings them together here in a way that feels fresh and unique.
A short book with a large cast might not be a great idea, but Rio makes it work. We get shifting points of view, a bit of the relationships between the members of the group, and an eerie secret that comes to light and feels like the start of something much bigger, and all of that adds up to a satisfying read. That said, it also feels like a full novel might have given the author an opportunity to explore a lot of things that are just mentioned here as well as extra space to study the correlation between what they find and the violent incidents that have been happening in town.
Ultimately, length is also the book’s main issue. The 144 pages include a playlist, a 10-page excerpt of Rio’s 2017 novel If We Were Villains, the acknowledgements, and two cocktail recipes. The novella itself abruptly ends on page 108, and when it does, it feels like too much was left out. That said, what’s there is good, and Rio is a talented writer who can pack a punch in a thin novella.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the January 2025 issue of Locus.
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