We Look Down at the Body
by Ron Riekki
Two security guards find a dead body on their night shift. What unfolds is not a typical crime thriller. Instead, the story veers toward insightful and often hilarious adventures in self-pity, existential wallowing, and interpersonal bumbling. The result is a stylistically ambitious novella that, on many levels, is a truly original work of genre-bending fiction.
Reviews
“Ron Riekki reminds us we’ve forgotten how to deal with the living people in our lives, and the dead. His new book We Look Down at the Body is a Beckettian tale told in 12 scenes that wrestles with death and sex, overdoses and Narcan, unfulfilling jobs and unfulfilled humans, strip clubs and guns, moms and suicide hotlines. Done almost entirely in two-person dialog without identifiers, the pace is fast and exhilarating. Americans who read Ron Riekki can’t help but see themselves in all ways they’d rather not, and that is his gift to the reader.”
- Tim Staley, author of The Pieces You Have Left
“In the great 1974 Coppola film The Conversation, Gene Hackman eavesdrops on people for a living. It's a dangerous game. Ron Riekki's new book is one long, equally dangerous conversation. Remember this as you listen in: ‘Finding a dead body isn't boring ...’”
- Rafael Alvarez, writer on the HBO drama The Wire and author of Don't Count Me Out: A Baltimore Dope Fiend's Miraculous Recovery.
“In the tradition of the brilliant plays of Annie Baker, Ron Riekki’s We Look Down at the Body brings us voices that seem to come out of the ether of contemporary culture, with all its loneliness, alienation, and hardscrabble struggle to get by and start relationships and seek help. These voices quickly become compelling people in gruesome and absurd circumstances as they struggle to find and do the right things by others—the living and the dead—and themselves. Is it possible for us to connect in the wreckage we have wrought around us? Read this harrowing, unflinching book and decide for yourself.”
- Jonathan Johnson, author of Hannah and the Mountain
We Look Down at the Body is part of the Egregious Pulp book series by Jokes Review. Other books in this series include Meth Pirate Town by Rocco Sweetheart Johnson and The Nothing Campaign by Zach Docter.