The Haunting of Modesto O'Brien by Brit Griffin

The Haunting of Modesto O'Brien

By Brit Griffin

Latitude 46 Publishing 2025

Brit Griffin's fourth novel, The Haunting of Modesto O'Brien, is tough to categorize. It's a "discover who everyone is and what's actually happening" mystery, but one that blends in supernatural elements (from eerie to frightening) within an historical, "western" context (both factual and feigned), all while examining several overarching themes. While that may sound like a story with an identity crisis, Griffin is skilled enough to stitch it all together such that it's comprehensible and effective.

The story opens in Cobalt, Ontario, a mining town in the early 1900s where men still carry shotguns and six-shooters. They tramp horses through muddy, unpaved streets. They frequent brothels and rape the surrounding land for precious resources (one central theme). Everything here oozes violence (another central theme). The mystery begins in the wilderness nearby. Lucy, a young woman looking for her sister, encounters a prospector as he's hacking for silver in the dirt. She accuses him of kidnapping her twin and subsequently drops him with a load of buckshot. Ravens (a recurring symbol) quickly arrive to enjoy the feast.

Next we meet Modesto O'Brien, a self-proclaimed detective and fortune-teller. He gets his first client, another young woman, who wants to hire him to find her sister and to kill a man. Modesto learns the woman is Lily Nail, twin of Lucy, who’s on the run from the law, amongst other things. Here Griffin adds to the first mystery and stacks on another as we discover Modesto himself has a past, and he's come to Cobalt to get revenge.

Griffin first introduces the supernatural during Modesto's initial encounter with Lily. Lily's sister Lucy is reputed to have the second sight, as does Modesto, revealed via a memory of his grandmother:

She said she’d learned [her second sight] from her mother, who’d learned from her mother before [. . . ]

Modesto had asked, is it only for mams and Grannies

Usually, but I can see you have been touched, I can teach you

How do you know

By the whites of your eyes, but come now, we have to go

Where

To the betwixt and the between

Where’s that

It’s where the other ones are, it’s where you mama was born, on that big ship in the middle of the ocean, neither here nor there, neither home nor this place

Who are the other ones

They’re the voices from home, from the sand down by the water, and the trees along its shore, from under the ground where you walk and don’t see them

But you’re not at home anymore Gran

Not to worry, I brought them along with me in my pocket

And then they had sat in the dark together and drifted.

[. . . ] O’Brien always started his own drifting in that same dark room that Biddy had conjured the first time he had sat with her, sent his mind to circle around the dark room, to get oriented, and then back to this room in which he now sat with this woman who had crossed his path in the here and now.

These supernatural encounters recur again and again throughout the novel, ramping up in intensity until, with the introduction of a strange creature that’s haunting the countryside, they turn to full-blown horror.

What is the Nail sisters’ backstory? What is Modesto’s? Is the creature real or imaginary? Is everything somehow related? And how will it all play out? Those are the mysteries. The revelation of these, the escalating elements of terror, and the thematic examinations of violence and environmentalism make up the crux of The Haunting of Modesto O'Brien.

Interestingly, Griffin's writing style see-saws throughout. Her prose can be very terse, gritty, and authentic as she's depicting scenes firmly in the real world. It becomes noticeably more "literary" when she veers into the thematic or supernatural parts of the story. You can sense a little of that in the sample above. Griffin pretty much sticks to this delineation. She doesn't waffle willy-nilly between styles. It's a purposeful narrative approach that works well and tends to enhance the overall impact of her scenes. That is, until the last few.

At the novel's climax, the real world and the supernatural converge in a chaotic confrontation. Here Griffin had to choose which narrative style to employ, and she decided to lean heavily toward the "literary”. A tad too much. The choice perhaps gives extra weight to the thematic conclusions of the story, but it does so by lessening the immediate impact of the real-world plot resolutions. And as the novel is a mystery at heart, that could leave some readers feeling a bit let down.

Does that undermine the novel? Not enough to matter. All in all, The Haunting of Modesto O'Brien is an entertaining mystery/horror/historical western/literary novel that’s worth a read. I just feel sorry for the folks at Barnes and Noble who have to decide which shelf to put it on.

Jim Abbiati is a writer and IT professional living in Mystic, Connecticut. He's the author of Fell's Hollow, The NORTAV Method for Writers, and has an MFA in Creative Writing from National University