Not exactly an homage to H.P. Lovecraft nor Mary Shelley, Reanimated Rex is a book that nonetheless walks the same crooked path as Herbert West-Reanimator and Frankenstein.

It all starts when a high school kid sneaks into an abandoned amusement park one stormy night. After being shuttered for nearly 20 years, the dilapidated dinosaur theme park is now a dense thicket of overgrown flora and derelict structures. 

Still standing—and scattered throughout the park—are life-size statues of various dinosaurs such as the T-Rex, the Stegosaurus, the Allosaurus, a couple of Utahraptors, and the big daddy of them all, the Spinosaurus. They are amazingly realistic and dominate the landscape with their stoney silence. 

In the dark and in the rain, the former dinosaur park is certainly a scary place to be. In fact, it’s the perfect place for an innocent high school caper to go terribly wrong—sadly, the young trespasser is never heard from again. 

After three weeks, the local police give up on the case. Teenagers go missing all the time, they conclude. Maybe he enlisted in the army and didn’t tell anyone? Or maybe he joined the circus? Who knows? 

Laura Harding, the kid’s big sister, doesn’t see it that way. She does a little sleuthing around town and discovers that her brother was spotted near the dinosaur park the night of his disappearance.  

Skipping ahead to the next dark and stormy night, Laura is at the dinosaur park looking for clues. In a Blue Velvet-like moment, she finds one of her brother’s sneakers in the weeds—with his foot still in it. 

Unbeknownst to Laura, she is not alone. Alan Tippett, the park’s original owner and dino geek, has secretly been living in the tunnels under the property for the past 20 years. He’s a big weirdo with a big secret. He knows that his dinosaur statues come alive during thunderstorms. 

Well, they aren’t really alive, he tells Laura when the two finally meet. They change from stationary dinosaur replicas into lifelike creatures only when it storms—“something about the electricity,” he shrugs. 

It’s here when Reanimated Rex takes a sharp moral turn. Just as Victor Frankenstein did in 1818, Tippett was using lightning and thunder to successfully transcend natural limits to create life, and just like Herbert West in 1922, he found a way to animate his creations.  

Also like Frankenstein and West, Tippett’s monsters ultimately destroy him. “I always knew it would end this way,” he says with his final breath, “live, create and die from the creation.”

Coda: Tippett dies in a very satisfying way. If you’re wondering what ultimately happens to Laura, however, you’ll have to hold on until the very last sentence. But believe me it’s worth the wait. Honestly, it’s probably the best final sentence of any novel I’ve ever read. 

[ Reanimated Rex / By Alex Ebenstein / First Printing: May 2024 / ISBN: 9781960470034 ]