#BlogTour-‘Dead Is Beautiful’ by Jo Perry

About the book..

‘Dead Is Beautiful’ finds Rose leading Charlie from the peace of the afterlife to the place he hates most on earth, “Beverly Fucking Hills,” where a mature, protected tree harboring a protected bird is being illegally cut down.

The tree-assault leads Charlie and Rose to a to murder and to the person Charlie loathes most in life and in death, the sibling he refers to only as “his shit brother,” who is in danger.

Charlie fights-across the borders of life and death–for the man who never fought for him, and with the help of a fearless Scotsman, a beautiful witch, and a pissed-off owl, Charlie must stop a cruel and exploitative scheme and protect his beloved Rose.

Many thanks to the fabulous Emma of Damp Pebbles Blog Tours who provided me with an ebook copy of ‘Dead Is Beautiful’ in return for an honest review! I am thrilled to be reading and reviewing the fourth Charlie and Rose story.

One undead man and his undead dog in the Beverly Hills may not be an obvious choice when you are browsing the bookshelves for your next great read, but pull up a chair and let me tell this is exactly why you need to hunt these books down (ideally via Fahrenheit Press!)and let Charlie and Rose work their magic.

”My shit brother with a clenched fist for a heart as the suffocating shadow that doomed my shuffling, feckless, chubbed-out self to never catchup,to always lose, to trip over his extended foot and stumble, to twist and bruise a weak ankle, to cry over the milk he spilled on my mother’s ne fur coat and for which he blamed me-already hiding-though no one ever looked for me-in the moth-cake-stink-filled airless blackness of the guest room closet.”

THIS is how Jo Perry writes! How immediately are you there, in the closet with Charlie, ghost in his on house, hiding but not needing to cos no one would ever come looking for him.

Charlie was shot to death outside a chicken and waffle shop, his death written off as the simple ‘wrong place, wrong time’ occurence that marked his entire existence. Beyond death, he has come back from the afterlife with his canine companion Rosie, who seems to have attached herself to him. Her death makes you ant to break things, another abandoned soul who starved to death-unwanted, unmissed and unloved.

And here is where Jo Perry excels, this could be maudlin and too sad to enjoy but you can feel righteous anger rise off the page as well as in your own heart as you read about lives being snuffed out and the world, well the world just keeps on doing what it does best. It turns and we bleed our lives onto its surface, to eventually become buried underneath it. His fury and anger keeps him here, his wanton lust to see his shit borther and awful harridan of a wife pay some price for their gilded life.

He finds himself coming to to the sound of a chainsaw at the beginning of the book, and Rosie half way up a magnificent tree. She is trying to draw his attention to what is nesting there, a rare owl and her baby. As the mother owl flies out to attack the tree feller, her  baby falls to the ground where , bizarrely, a naked Amazonian woman has appeared from the nearest house. This oman is Eleanor Starfeather, house sitter and doula who calls the police to report the crime of a murdered tree. As expected, she is treated as a crazy hippy and reading this back it sounds comical, but it really isn’t, the flagrant disregard hich humans have for nature and the dismissal of this bird begins the hole nature versus nurture arm of the story.

Eleanor is not only a magnificent creature, she happens to be house sitting for….Charlie’s brother. Even what remains after rejecting the afterlife has a cosmic sense of humour.

”And the more I raged against the repeated extinguishing of this squat little light of mine, and the hotter my hatred smoldered for my always-triumphant subjugator,the more powerful and suren and handsome and mean my shit brother became. As if diminishing me,mocking me,cheating me, tricking me and hurting me muscled his strength and sharpened his gift for connivance and brutality.”

Following Eleanor, Charlie and Rose get to witness one of the most moving scenes I have read this year, a multi faith ceremony to remeber the abandoned dead. The idea that a person, a child, could move throught the world and leave no trace, be unremembered and unclaimed is genuinely heartbreaking. They memorialise on a patch of ground , the thousands of unclaimed bodies that are the forgotten of Beverly Hills.

And again, this is what Jo does supremely well, the contrast between the fakeness and uber ‘relaity’ of Beverly Hills versus two ghosts who have more substance than anyone occupying the mortal plain.

Rarely do you read such achingly precise descriptions, such hauntingly quiet and determined prose. The use of the word ‘fuck’ has never been more deliberate and accurately employed, it is a meditation on life and death and what we get to leave behind. The constant push to self aggrandise versus the actuality of how briefly we inhabit our physical shells, And how easily forgotten.

Charlie is Rose’s amanuensis and Rose is Charlie’s reminder that he can love, rage and be tethered to a place and time and have it not be something awful. Rose gives love and companionship like most dogs do-unflinching, unswerving and with all their heart.

We have an English Springer Spaniel who is a rescue dog with multiple issues which we are working through, slowly and in his own time, and the idea that anyone would deliberately hurt such peaceful, loving animals brings your rage to the fore. And I think that is why I related so much to Charlie and his need to protect Rose,as well as how he feels as a human. To be born and live as a literal ghost and then more impact as an actual ghost is a powerful image and one that lingers.

I genuinely cannot wait to read the other 3 books, and hopefully more in the future.

About the author…

Jo Perry earned a Ph.D. in English, taught college literature and writing,  produced and wrote episodic television, and published articles,  book reviews, and poetry.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, novelist Thomas Perry.    They have two adult children. Their two dogs are rescues.

Jo is the author of DEAD IS BETTER, DEAD IS BEST, DEAD IS GOOD, and DEAD IS BEAUTIFUL, a dark, comic mystery series from Fahrenheit Press.

See below for a special guest post for #Fahrenbruary, a grass roots movement that took place this-and hopefully every!-February to promote, boost and champion independent UK publishers. Yes, Jo’s books are available on Kindle Unlimited BUT please please PLEASE support the indie publishers to keep their authors going by buying directly from them! It means so much!

https://itsanindiebookblog.com/2019/02/02/the-fires-fahrenbruary-a-fahrenbruary-guest-post-from-jo-perry/

Links-

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoPerryAuthor @JoPerryAuthor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joperryauthor/

Website: www.authorjoperry.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noirjoperry/

Links to buy-

Fahrenheit Press: http://www.fahrenheit-press.com/books_dead_is_beautiful.html

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Beautiful-Charlie-Rose-Investigate/dp/1912526433/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=dead+is+beautiful&qid=1559637621&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Beautiful-Charlie-Rose-Investigate/dp/1912526433/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?keywords=dead+is+beautiful+joe+perry&qid=1559637654&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr1