Book Review: Graveyard Shift by M. L. Rio

Every night, in a college’s ancient cemetery, a group of five weary souls cross paths as they smoke and share the night air. There’s the jaded hotel receptionist, who’s given up on doing anything exciting with her library science degree, and the charismatic bartender, who’s paying the price for breaking his cardinal rule of not sleeping with co-workers. Then there’s the displaced steward of the derelict church that looms over them, who’s been worn-down by years of debt and drudgery, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper who’s in search of a career-making story. Finally, there’s the indifferent rideshare driver who’s adapted to a nocturnal existence out of necessity.

One dark October evening, these disparate night owls find a fresh, open grave in the churchyard that wasn’t there before. They watch as the gravedigger returns and empties a bag into the shallow hole. Realising he may be the key to the strange happenings around town – a series of violent outbursts afflicting the community billed as ‘Hostile Incidents’ – the group trail the man through the night, determined to uncover the dark mystery that’s been making headlines for the last few weeks.

Graveyard Shift is M. L. Rio’s first book since 2017’s If We Were Villains, and whilst it swaps an ensemble cast of obsessive acting students for an oddly likeable gang of sleepless misfits, it still maintains that dark and foreboding academia backdrop. Rio’s writing has always been firmly rooted in her knowledge and involvement of the exclusive, competitive and oft-romanticised world of higher education, but this novella feels even more personal, owing to the author’s first-hand experience of being an insomniac. The characters in this book live a vampiric existence, coming alive at night when everyone else is asleep. It lends the story an atmospheric, almost fever dream quality, at once stark and hazy, reflecting how the world must seem to those who don’t have a natural circadian rhythm.

As with many novellas, Graveyard Shift feels a little like stepping straight into the middle of a book. There’s no preamble, no tidy finale. In fact, it ends just as the pace is gathering and the unsettling mystery is beginning to unravel. It takes an extremely gifted writer to bring a story to life in such a short page count. Thankfully, Rio is that kind of writer – crafting a cast of lonely characters that are instantly real and relatable. You don’t need to be an insomniac to understand how these characters feel. You might expect a bone-deep enervation, but it’s more an overwhelming sense of inertia; of life just passing them by as they remain in this strange, sleepless cycle they’ve found themselves unintentionally chained to.

The mystery of the gravedigger and the eerie nighttime burial is almost secondary to the exploration of the people and their personal struggles. Yet you’ll still find yourself wanting to read more; yearning to find out how the rest of the story unfolds and the subsequent ramifications for the five characters. If you love stories that blend macabre mystery and sinister horror centred around mycology and ethics, then Graveyard Shift will deliver all the creepy, Scooby-Doo-for-adults vibes you could want. Just know that you won’t ever look at rats the same way afterwards.

★★★★

Graveyard Shift is published by Wildfire on 24 September 2024