A Congregation of Jackals by S. Craig Zahler
Dorchester Publishing, 2011
ISBN: 978-0843964158

Editor’s note: This reviews the 2011 novel from Dorchester Publishing, now defunct. The cover image links to a new edition published in 2017 by Raw Dog Screaming Press.

A Congregation of Jackals is an intricate, cautionary, Wild West tale of what can happen if evil is left unchecked, and people allow themselves to grow complacent towards wickedness.

Rancher Oswell Danford and his brother receive a telegram from a former member of their old gang, inviting them to his wedding in Montana. Within the telegram, however, is the hidden message that a reckoning is coming to all of them. The deeds that led to this reckoning are explained by Oswell himself in a letter that he writes to his wife as he is traveling to the town of Trailspur. In a narrative never told to her before, he describes how, as bank robbers, their moral borders were progressively blurring, to the point that they even committed cold-blooded murder during their robberies, until they were offered a job by a man named Quinlan. (“I had never been involved with wickedness, with evil, until I meet [sic] the man that wrote that note,” Oswell writes.)

    After the job, faced with the absolute extreme of what they could become, the men are “scared straight” and go on to lead fairly normal lives for several years. Oswell and his men, in their own ways, have tried to repent for their past transgressions by leading specifically-structured lives (i.e. marriage, becoming religious, not bearing children), but fate interrupts their self-granted pardons.  Their choice to go to Montana and try to protect themselves and the people of Trailspur on their own, like all of their dealings with Quinlan (and the episodes surrounding him) has catastrophic results. What makes this story more troubling is that the sheriff of the town and other law enforcement officers, all seasoned enforcers, see the signs that something is wrong, but either choose to ignore it altogether or underestimate the malevolence that waits to destroy them all.

This story does not contain a supernatural element, nor does it need one: the characters, even down to Zahler’s paladin, the white-charger riding Deputy Goodstead, contribute in their own ways to the chilling, savage events that are worse than any mere ghost or goblin could contrive—to battle the Ruthless, the Just eventually become ruthless themselves. All of the characters are complex: the four men of the Tall Boxer Gang did horrendous things, and do not totally acknowledge the damage they caused, but the reader is sympathetic nonetheless. Even Alphonse, the sadistic Frenchman that creates “art” out of living subjects, has a moment of incredible but genuine concern for Quinlan, which somehow does not seem totally out of place (at least to me) despite his sociopathic tendencies.

There are several themes in this complex work that cannot be addressed in a short review. A Congregation of Jackals explores the nature of evil and how far-reaching and destructive its taint can be, especially to the innocent. In the end, according to Zahler, the Devil will have his due…and then some. When that occurs, everyone is damaged and satisfaction is achieved by no one, even the damned. This novel is recommended and would be interesting fodder for an adult-aged book club or any fan of horror who likes more meat in their novels than the superficial, hack-and-slash fare.

Contains: graphic violence, gore, sex

Reviewed by: W. E. Zazo-Phillips