The Congregation of the Dead — Richard Cox

We found her standing over the body, blood-splattered and exhausted, and frozen in her tracks, crying out time after time: "Die, bitch! Die, bitch!" She was panting and gasping for air, chanting hysterically, and seemingly hypnotized by her handiwork. We had to pry the ax handle from her hands and forcefully remove her from the premises. She fought us like a wildcat, demanding to be left alone to watch the blood flow from Milly's body. Set in a sleazy town overwhelmed by desperate people who vilify their full humanity by trial and error, The Congregation of the Dead is a scathing psycho social adventure that takes place at the highest and the lowest ends of the human experience. It is a twisting (and twisted!) tale of love and hate, spiritual life and spiritual death, of controlled and uncontrolled passions. It is a stirring and scorching adventure - a gritty tale of debauchery and murder, of corrupted souls and lost innocence - all neatly wrapped around the trials and tribulations of a small number of ordinary people fired by hope and struggling purposefully against all odds to bring some kind of moral equanimity into their sick and perverse little town.