Chuck Wendig’s Mockingbird Sings a Dark Song

When expletive-fueled twenty-something Miriam was a teen, her life took an unpleasant turn, and as a supernatural result, she can simply touch someone and know not only how, but when they’ll die. That’s a heady mojo, and Miriam spent many years as a pseudo nomad, drifting and grifting from one roadside dump motel to the next, on the run from herself, and targeting the soon-to-die in order to make off with their cash.
Mockingbird is set a year after the events of the first book, Blackbirds. Miriam has come close to settling down, but that doesn’t mean she’s a happy camper. She’s ditched her Blackbird Black dye job, and is sporting Fuchsia Flamingo (“the kind of pink you might see in the heart of a mushroom cloud”), but the vivid new hue hasn’t changed her bad girl exterior, and she remains a rebellious bundle of unsociable energy. She has, however, come to terms with a key twist in her existing know-how-and-when-someone-will-die abilities, though it doesn’t make her personal choices less stressful. Nor do those nightmarish visions of talking birds…

As Miriam struggles to exist like a regular human, unforeseen events come to a head, disrupting her stab at normalcy. A bird-masked killer with a swallow tattoo is beheading teenage girls, and that’s only the start of Miriam’s troubles. There’s a sliver of personal self-discovery in store for our anti-heroine, but she never sheds her caustic sense of humor and cornered-animal instincts.
There’s one speed to the way Wendig tells a story, and it’s fast. Very fast. Greased-cheetah-on-speed fast. His books carom wildly from one short, punchy chapter to the next. Miriam Black is wonderfully, unlikeably likable, a mouthy loner, damaged goods, a fireball with impeccable comic timing. Mockingbird expands upon the rules of her special touch, and it makes for another heads-will-roll supernatural thriller.
Mockingbird is available October 20.