I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £9.99 paperback £4.68 Kindle eBook

William Day should be an acclaimed Arctic explorer. But after a failed expedition to find the fabled Open Polar Sea, in which his men only survived by eating their comrades, he returned in disgrace. A cannibal. A murderer.

Thirteen years later, his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing in the same waters. Perhaps this is Day's chance to restore his tarnished reputation by bringing Stevens – the man who's haunted his whole life – back home. But when the rescue mission into the frozen wastes becomes an uncanny journey into his own past, Day must face up to the things he's done.

Aboard ship, Day must also contend with unwanted passengers: a reporter obsessively digging up the truth about the first expedition, and Stevens's wife, a spiritualist whose séances both fascinate and frighten. Following a trail of cryptic messages, gaunt bodies, and old bones, their search becomes more and more unnerving, as it becomes clear that – for Day – the restless dead are never far behind.

Some nightmares are very vivid and specific (the monster chasing you) but sometimes the worst ones are just when you know things are wrong, haunting you on the periphery of your vision and can’t quite work out how to escape. It preys on your dreaming mind and builds that sense of fear. When things get worse what will you do? In Ally Wilkes’ disturbing horror novel Where The dead Wait a 19th century rescue mission into the Arctic follows the track of a previously doomed expedition and as they near the end of the search more horrors await discovery.

William Day of the British Navy was once a young, ambitious but kind-hearted officer. But in 1869 his captain’s expedition on HMS Reckoning to discover a mythical sea route has been trapped in the ice. Provisions are low and the death toll mounts. When the survivors are eventually found, it is discovered to keep alive they did the unthinkable with their dead – cannibalism. Day’s reputation will be ruined in scandal a friend of his named Stevens will prosper.

Then in 1882 Day is recalled to the Admiralty. It is now Stevens’ turn to have been lost in the Arctic seas and Day is tasked to find him – and possibly finally restore his reputation but also be reunited with this compelling man. Day pulls together a crew of doomed whalers, Steven’s spiritualist wife and then they go into danger which quickly finds them. However, for Day the constant presence of Stevens drives him onwards and onwards as things get worse as it speak to the worst secrets of his past.

What strikes me the most bout this store is the sense of the liminal. Wilkes uses the setting of Arctic seas, ice and skies to create a landscape that feels like a big oppressive liminal space into which anything can go and be lost in or mysterious things come out of. It is never a welcoming place where endless sunlight bleaches the bones and burns the skin or endless dark plunges the unlucky into despair. It’s a very unique type of prison. Cleverly the outside then has the pressure cooker of the ships Day and his crew live on. The steamer HMS resolution is in contrast cramped, full of dark shadowy places and irregular noises where you cannot find much peace before someone else finds you. The outside and inside are working together to create a ever growing pressure of dissonance impacting the crew and in the 19th century we have a very superstitious crew all carrying their own bad memories and to which potentially being lost in ice, without enough provisions is bad enough but the people feel the dead may be haunting them the pressure gets stronger. How long can rationality take hold when people are under such pressure? This is a novel skilled at building up a sense of dread that things will explode…and they do.

One central mystery is focused on the characters of Day and Stevens. Day is a character we feel sympathetic too but as readers we soon get aware he is carrying a lot of secrets. Not simply that he’s done the unthinkable – eaten the dead but that this earlier expedition carries a stigma that it may have engineered some punishments to create new bodies. We witness one key moment at the very start that has many consequences. Day though seems to carry more secrets - other things that in his mind are worse than what is publicly known about this time in his life. While we grow to admire Day we feel he is weak and so may have been pushed into something he never stood up against and the storyline is great at making us have to wait. In contrast is the malevolent Stevens outwardly in looks a heroic angelic figure that Day has a fixation on (Day’s homosexuality is another secret he works hard to hide from his crew) but the reader feels Stevens is a lot nastier based on the reputation he carries, Day’s flashbacks and the mysterious haunting images of him that Day witnesses again and again. As readers we suspect that Stevens is heavily involved in the past disaster but not sure how and as horrific clues from Stevens’ new command appears it seems dark events are afoot. Eventually all is revealed and its unflinching in the horror about to descend on these unfortunate crews. For day what will his eventual decision be as we can see both his kind and more hidden ruthless nature appear throughout the book which could doom him for a second time.

The horror is deliciously delivered. The first half of the book is about building this powerful atmosphere aided by many strange events – some human-driven while others very possibly not. The madness of people, the environment, and the way everything feels slightly unreal makes this a murky humanless world where bad things can just happen. As they escalate the impact on people’s minds get worse and worse. One horror theme here is less focused on the supernatural but that people may perform irrational and horrific things to break the bad luck they think is on them.  As we move into the second half of the book the threats get more active and surprising. It neatly wraps up the two storylines and reaches a powerful climactic showdown of characters at the end battling to survive.

Where The Dead Wait is haunting - not just with the hints of the restless dead but in its creation of an environment that is truly desolate and its impact on anyone within it when things go wrong. Life here is fragile and to survive when things go wrong you may be pushed into doing the unthinkable to survive just even the next hour. As the setting an eerie place those deeds though may carry echoes for a very long time afterwards. A thoroughly disquieting but mesmerising read and strongly recommended for a cold winter’s night of a read. Wilkes continues to be a writer to watch!