Dead Mann Walking by Stefan Petrucha

Publisher: Roc, The Penguin Group
Pages: 352

(Released: October 4, 2011)

From the Cover:

After Hessius Mann was convicted of his wife's murder, suppressed evidence came to light and the verdict was overturned...-...too bad he was already executed. But thanks to the miracles of modern science Hessius was brought back to life. Sort of.

Now that he's joined the ranks of Fort Hammer's pulse-challenged population, Hessius attempts to make a "living" as a private investigator. But when a missing persons case leads to a few zombies cut to pieces, Hessius starts thinking that someone's giving him the run-around-and it's not like he's in any condition to make a quick getaway... 

Hessius Mann can't catch a break (and maybe he doesn't want to...first aid involves super glue and thread).

First, his wife has an affair with his boss. He knows because pictures show up in his email, displayed in all their glory and living color. Hess rushes home to confront his wife and finds her beaten to death. Everyone knows he has a temper, and when the PD, along with his boss, arrives on his heels, Hess is accused of a murder he swears he didn't commit.

After he's relieved of his mortal life, it's found that the police (mainly his boss, Thomas Booth) suppressed DNA evidence at his trial. Too bad he's already in his grave. But, through the wonder of modern science and without his permission, he's brought back and into a new existence. An immortal (sort of) existence, one of the walking dead, or Chakz (which means jerky...dried meat) as they're referred to, and trying to make a living as a private detective (the PD doesn't employ chakz cops).

Hessius has to admit, it's damn hard to be a PI. See, his kind doesn't remember so well, nor do they move as easy, or frankly, smell as nice as a liveblood. He's luckier than most, he can almost pass for the living, he's one of high functioning few. When reanimation came to be, loved ones were randomly brought back, that is until a few went feral, eating a liveblood is strictly forbidden. Then, the discrimination started.

When William Turgeon steps into his office with a missing person case, he figures he's struck gold, a healthy payday for a chak. Only this missing person is also a chak, Frank Boyle, and it gets stranger from there. Much stranger as his investigation continues.

Dead Mann Walking by Stefan Petrucha is the first in the Hessius Mann Series. It's the story of what happens when, through the magic of science, the wrongly executed are given a second chance at... a kind of life. When Hessius Mann is reanimated, it's to find himself out of a job and with more enemies than he can count (which isn't be very high anyway, not with his new swiss cheese memory). There's also the segment of the population (which is almost everyone) who hated the chakz, they want them segregated from society, and would like them all destroyed. Including Hess Mann. William Turgeon offers him a chance to help another of his kind. So, his search for Frank Boyle begins. But then a strange thing happens, he starts to unravel a tangled mystery. Several chakz have gone missing, just like the one whose head is the only thing missing piece with it's body parts scattered throughout the desert. And Mann can't get it out of his head. Can the reanimated were really die? It haunts him, like a nightmare, only nightmares can make chakz feral, it's a thin line to walk, and he's kind of clumsy anyway. The one thing that keeps him grounded is his assistant, an ex-addict, Misty (she also keeps him patched up). But, Turgeon may not be who he says he is and neither is the billionaire who has a weird fascination for chakz.

Dead Mann Walking is a great beginning to a new zombie series, a zombie series with a twist, a noir twist (also a great twist on the title in more ways than one). Stefan Petrucha creates a near future world where science as achieved what only God has been able to do...so far. Science allows for those who shouldn't have died to be given new life. The only trouble is that it's a temporary fix because, eventually, all chakz goes feral, it's just a matter of time. Then there's the damage to body parts that have a tendency to break or fall off, you know, like ears and noses, maybe even fingers and toes. Petrucha delivers his tale with one line jabs, generous amounts of humor, and horrific as well as graphic details (I mean, cutting the rot from some chak's body parts or bleaching the mildew away... ewwww....lol, kind of makes it all too real). And then there's the bad guy and how he rids himself of chak he really doesn't want. It's a must read for urban fantasy fans and horror fans alike, and even room for the adventurous noir or mystery/thriller/chiller readers willing to take a chance. Though it contains little true romance, it has a romantic feel to it, Hess speaks with romance in his words. It's not your typical zombie, Night of the Living Dead, type of story. I very much enjoyed it and can't wait for the next in the series. 5 out of 5 fairy kisses for this reader.

I received my copy for review from the author, Stefan Petrucha. All opinions expressed are my own.

Fun Contest and Q & A with author Stefan Petrucha (over @ Vampire Wire)

Wanna check out a fun contest, hear Marta's take on zombies, and Stefan Petrucha answer intimate questions regarding said zombies (or chakz as he refers to them) or at least answer Marta's questions about his new book, Dead Mann Walking? THEN, you need to rush on over to Vampire Wire, cause Marta and Stefan are talkin zombies (or at least about freaking zombie parts....if you know what I mean....*wink* *wink*). Stefan is telling EVERYONE about his leading Mann.... and what you can expect in his new book, Dead Mann Walking!

And remember, I said there was a contest (all of Marta's contests are fun)...so head on over, and leave a comment (or ask Stefan about his chakz and Dead Mann Walking).


(Psssst.....Hey.... while you there.... show Marta some love for her new YA gothic novel, Dark Companion....you're going to love it.... here's a peek at the cover art, though it maybe subject to tweeks and don't forget about her Casa Dracula series.... so good you're going to ask for seconds!)

Dead Mann Walking by Stefan Petrucha.... An Explanation From the Author

An Explanation From the Author: In my first draft of Dead Mann Walking, a group of peacefully protesting chakz, pushed too far by the living, go feral, fulfilling the zombie stereotype. As chak-detective Hessius Mann helplessly watches the mess, he broods on the fictional history of the walking dead.


Upon reading this, Ace editor, Jessica Wade, felt it pulled the reader out of the story-world. I agreed, lopping it out quicker than Ash with a chainsaw-hand.


However, to celebrate Dead Mann’s Oct 4 release, what could be more appropriate than restoring it to half-life? So here ‘tis, a quick, quirky look at Z’s from the POV of a PI who should know.

Dead Mann Talking: A History of Zombies

 

Crowded, surrounded, attacked, the chakz gave the people what they wanted, proof that they were dangerous. It was as though that group-mind the LBs worried about had actually kicked in. Maybe the ferals just never had the numbers before, or maybe you had to be far enough back to see the patterns. I saw them now.


Flashes of chak-bodies moved in elegant waves, like flocks of migrating birds. The livebloods, for all their higher functions, fled without grace. The big picture pulsed and throbbed. But the personal tragedies played out in tiny spaces, as if the two had nothing to do with one another. In the center of the swirls stood the fair-haired cop I’d seen from the window, bullets spitting from his AK-47. They tore some dead flesh. Mostly, he was hitting livebloods before the ferals took him down.


So was this Ezekiel and his dry-bones rising in the valley of death? Was it then, or later, now, or the future? The edges were arbitrary, the beginnings and endings likewise. But as I watched, this was the shit I remembered.

In 1929 W.B. Seabrook wrote about voodoo cults and resurrected slaves in a novel called The Magic Island. It made sense that Haiti, whose population had recently thrown off their shackles, would have plantation slaves for their monsters.


In 1932, Victor Halperin’s White Zombie took it to the white Europeans. The island lust of Murder Legendre, played by Bela Lugosi, put a white virgin’s virtue at risk.


But these were early, proto-forms. There was no blood yet, not like there was on the Fort Hammer plaza. My eyes singled out a male teen, all buff and dressed to shock with Mohawk, tattoos and piercings. He ran half-heartedly, grabbing at the side of his head where his ear had been once. Red liquid dripped between his fingers. Eventually, he slowed and then, simply stopped.

In 1943 Jacques Tournier’s I Walked With a Zombie gave us a dead-eyed scarecrow. It was more a symbol. No savagery, just foreboding. It was Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend in 1954 that took it up a notch. The book was sort of about vampires, but they were so much like zombies that the 1964 Italian film version with Vincent Price, The Last Man on Earth, became the prime inspiration for George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.


1968, the zombie had arrived. Romero was the first, really, if you don’t count Ezekiel and all the others. What took so long? Well, in those days, the dead moved slowly.

On the plaza, groups formed and collapsed like cauldron bubbles. I watched two families band together. The mothers carried the little ones, forcing the older children ahead. Weirdly, the fathers carried doors, using them as shields. Two danglers and a gleet banged at them. They even tried the knob.

Romero made it biblical again. Cannibal corpses, old friends and lovers among them, children chewing on parents. The condition spreading like plague, and no one knew why or who to shoot. His sequel, Dawn of the Dead, used the same idea, but more directly as social critique, played out in comic-book colors so gaudy you had to get the joke.

I hoped the family made it. Something should survive, and it didn’t look good for anyone else. The elegant swarms had surrounded the LBs, and as they squeezed in, began to lose their pretty shape. Together now, ferals and livebloods pushed and pulled en mass, so many, so close together, they could barely move. Limbs tangled, the center of the blob tumbled, all together, all at once, like football teams in a joint tackle.

After Romero, what could you say? A horde of lesser efforts followed, Fulci’s Zombi 2 notable for an underwater battle between zombie and shark. Then decades passed. 28 Days Later brought some class back to the movies. That was more about plague than the dead, but close enough, and its monsters were fast. The Dawn of the Dead remake followed suit. The books and comics got better – Monster Island by David Wellington, The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and later Charlie Adlard (now on TV!). By then people played video games like Rebel Without A Pulse and Left4Dead, shooting and being shot, eating and being eaten. The great democracy of mass media.

The mob in the plaza had formed a single creature, like one of Colby Green’s orgies, many limbs, many mouths, some screaming, some chewing. Stray Livebloods and ferals tried to pull the bodies free, but for different reasons. 

 

The cop with the flamethrower stood at the edge of the mass and stared, unsure what to do. He tried to help, used his free hand to grab a hand and yank, but when a feral came free, a chunk of dripping meat in its mouth, he’d had enough. He let loose with the thrower, turning it on the writhing pile. Before the cop could barbecue the lot, a liveblood clonked him with a crowbar, then dived into the smoldering mess, screaming that he had to find his girlfriend.

I’d like to say all the books and movies fade against the reality, but maybe it’s the reality that fades. After all, who could forget the surprise hit, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? This is the shit that gives us shape, that let’s us understand the world, even build it from scratch. Shakespeare told us. We are such stuff as nightmares are made on, and our little life is rounded with a scream.

I’d like to say all the books and movies fade against the reality, but maybe it’s the reality that fades. After all, who could forget the surprise hit, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? This is the shit that gives us shape, that let’s us understand the world, even build it from scratch. Shakespeare told us. We are such stuff as nightmares are made on, and our little life is rounded with a scream.

The plaza had reached critical mass. The blob broke and scattered. Bodies, some moving, spilled across the street, then onto the long black hospital entrance ramp that had kept the scene arms distant. The tide was coming in.

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