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Book: “Bodies of Work” by Clay McLeod Chapman
Publishing Info: Titan Books, April 2026
Where Did I Get This Book: I own it
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: At sixty-six years old, Winston Kemper has always been a nonentity. No one notices him. His simple existence barely registers for those who come into contact with him. Some call him feeble-minded. He is a janitor at the local church, a groundskeeper by default, and that’s it. No friends, no family. When he’s done with work, he returns home—a remote, single room apartment located above a garage—and that is where his true work begins.
Winston Kemper is a collector of voices, and his magnum opus—The Butterfly Girls—is a sprawling epic of untapped imagination. It has no single canvas, no particular frame. It is everywhere—scribbled on the walls, the floor, and countless notebooks.
Winston is creating a fantasia which exists in words, images and blood. As part of his ‘art’ he has been murdering forgotten women. Poor souls who slip through the cracks of society, who no one’s looking for. Mothers, sisters, daughters to someone, but no more.
Winston takes their lives, their voices.
But now he can hear them. They whisper to him. They talk of revenge.
Winston Kemper might not believe in ghosts, but he is about to learn they are very real. And they are very, very angry.
Review: Hooray! A new Clay McLeod Chapman book is out! Chapman’s books have been some of the most unsettling, disgusting, and fun books that I’ve read in recent years, his horror style being WAY out there and at times uncompromising while never feeling like it’s trying to be too edgy. I reminded myself of this when I read the description for his new novella “Bodies of Work”, as a book about a serial killer who takes ‘artistic inspiration’ from the women that he brutally murders. Because when a story like this is handled by a less talented author, it could very easily feel in bad taste or exploitative. But I’m happy to say that “Bodies of Work” didn’t feel that way to me, and it ended up being a quick and gripping horror tale.
This is a novella, so Chapman has less pages to work with, but he uses the pages effectively. We jump between the story of a serial killer named Winston Kemper who murders women (generally who fall under the ‘lesser dead’ umbrella who won’t be as obviously missed due to their circumstances) and is trying to implement them into a broader artistic vision, recreating them as butterfly women in a fantasy world that he has been obsessing over for many, many years. Our story is a combined narrative of the voices of the women he has killed acting as something of a Greek chorus, who act as muses as well as victims, as well as the fantasy story that is being created in his mind of butterfly women going to battle. It combines creepy serial killer scares with a strange dream-like whimsy, and it is such a weird and unsettling but also ethereal tale. There is gore, there are some very triggering aspects to it (violence towards women, child abuse, as well as other content warnings), but there is also an undercurrent of the bonds of friendship and the slow build up to revenge that balance out the very disturbing things. I quite enjoyed getting the perspectives of the victims as they tell the story in a flowing train of thought kind of way along with a straight forward narration. It blended well.
There is also a pretty brutal examination of how traumatic childhood combined with other uncontrollable factors can combine to create a dangerous predator of a human being who will go on to do unspeakable crimes. We get some insight into not only the women he has killed and their backstories (at least a bit; the voices have been losing their memories or blending together as time has gone on), but also into Winston’s background. I know that some people are burnt out of completely over stories where we learn about the back stories of the villain, and I also know that some people see such things as apologia for these characters. And while I can definitely understand this line of thinking and won’t tell people otherwise if that’s how they feel, I, myself, find these kinds of character studies to be interesting and, honestly, kind of important. Because in so many cases monstrous human beings they aren’t born monsters, and are instead created, and it’s so much easier to just say that it doesn’t matter and to not acknowledge it as opposed to confronting it. But Chapman also makes sure not to be making excuses for Kemper and his crimes, as he makes sure to give just as much weight and attention to the women that he kills to remind us that while Kemper’s victimization as a child due to trauma, abuse, and implied neurodivergence is tragic, it doesn’t excuse what he does later in life. I felt like Chapman balanced the realities pretty well.
It’s another winner from Clay McLeod Chapman, just in a shorter format this time around. I found “Bodies of Work” to be as tragic as it is visceral.
Rating 8: A surreal and brutal story about a serial killer who considers himself an artist, a chorus of victims who want their stories to be told, and an examination of trauma turning victims into monsters.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Bodies of Work” is included on the Goodreads list “Horror to Look Forward to in 2026”.
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