The Nobody by Tom Piccirilli

The Nobody by Tom Piccirilli is a novella that was published in early 2009 by Steve Clark’s Tasmaniac Publications in Australia, which has also published Tom’s newest story, The Last Deep Breath. Let me say right up front that The Nobody is filled with such intensity it made me grind my teeth together as I rushed to finish it. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. My dentist keeps telling me I’m not going to have any teeth left if I keep reading these types of books. I told him to blame the author for being such a damn good writer.

Anyway, this is the story of man named—

Well, we never really know his actual name, only that he’s referred to as Cryer, due to his insistent crying while healing from a serious head wound in the hospital. You see he used to be an overweight family man with a sizable tire around his waist. He came home one night after pigging out on fast-food hamburgers and fries, only to find his teenage daughter gutted in the living room, lying in a pool of her own blood. His wife was upstairs in the bathtub, tied up with masking tape around her wrists and mouth, and her throat cut from ear to ear. As Cryer hurries through the bathroom door, he sees the killer escaping out the opened window. When he grabs the man, he gets three inches of a steel-bladed knife embedded into his forehead for his trouble. Cryer should have died that night with his wife and daughter, but he didn’t. Instead, he ended up in a hospital until his insurance ran out and then a state-run facility for several months, losing ninety pounds in the process, becoming unrecognizable to those who once knew him, and gaining strength and power in his two hands. He has no memory of his past or who he is. The only thing Cryer knows for sure is that there's a big hole of emptiness inside his gut and he intends to kill the person who took his family away. But first, he has to get out of the facility before he can begin the hunting process. The one thing he does know is that he will find the killer one way or another. Of that, he's sure.

Tom Piccirilli first became known for his horror fiction (Hexes and The Deceased) several years ago, and then shifted to writing crime-noir thrillers (The Fever Kill, The Dead Letters, November Mourns, The Midnight Road, The Cold Spot, and The Coldest Mile), proving how talented an author he really is. Not many authors can write well in different genres, but Tom Pic is the man. In fact, he not only does well, he excels in writing the best fiction he can, offering his readers tightly-packed stories filled with taut suspense, characters who aren’t afraid to take a bullet to get their revenge, and sharp dialogue that’s lean and mean. He certainly does this with The Nobody, creating a sympathetic every man who’s lost his family in the most violent way, barely survived a death-delivered blow to the head, and who now has amnesia. There’s also something else this vividly drawn character has. It’s the will to get better and then hunt down the killer so he can squeeze the life of him with his hands. That’s what stays in the forefront of your mind as you read The Nobody.

Dark and violent with hardcore revenge as its central theme, The Nobody is one of the best novellas I’ve read in the last decade. If you haven’t read anything by Tom Piccirilli, then you’re in for a treat because this guy writes like a fired .44 magnum bullet—he’s fast and he knocks you right out of your little white cotton bobby socks with the first round! Few writers can do it as good as the Pic. Read this book and find out why he’s one of the most sought after authors in the dark suspense genre.