Dead of Night

September 5, 2011
Maberry (The King of Plagues) combines visceral horror and psychological terror in this bleak zombie thriller. When smalltown Pennsylvania police officers Dez Fox and JT Hammond respond to a break-in at a funeral home, they discover several bodies that refuse to stay dead. The bioengineered disease soon turns other locals into ravenous monsters. Meanwhile, Dez’s estranged ex-boyfriend, reporter Billy Trout, investigates the strange case of the missing corpse of executed serial killer Homer Gibbon. With the National Guard under orders to maintain quarantine at all costs, Dez, JT, and Billy are the only ones who can protect those untouched by the plague. Maberry grounds the story with scientific confidence, spares no attention to detail, and presents the undead as more than faceless targets, but despite clever usage of social media and a unique take on “zombie zero,” this is mostly a rehash of familiar elements.

October 1, 2011
A rogue scientist's experiment in revenge wreaks havoc on a rural township in Pennsylvania. A rare one-off from the prolific Maberry (Dust & Decay, 2011, etc.) recycles bits and pieces from B-horror flicks and adds a few twists of its own. The author dedicates the book to George A. Romero, penning an unapologetic love letter to Romero's Night of the Living Dead, right down to a setting in rural Pennsylvania. It's here in pastoral Stebbins County that things go to hell. It starts at a new-age funeral home whose proprietor, Doc "Lee" Hartnup, is startled to find the corpse of serial killer Homer Gibbon. Stumbling into a grotesque crime scene are two local cops, JT Hammond and his partner Desdemona "Dez" Fox. JT is more soulful, a quiet, cautious cop and father figure. Predictably, the book focuses on the voluptuous Dez: "Built like Scarlett Johansson, with ice blue eyes, bee-stung lips and a natural blonde if the rumors were true." Her self-destructive rage veers dangerously near caricature while her characterization as "Genghis Khan with boobs" doesn't exactly inspire affection. Still, this shortcoming won't detract Maberry's legions from enjoying his breathless, clipped prose as the zombie plague accelerates--just as a hurricane bears down on Stebbins County. The truly creepy part comes when local hack and serial-killer aficionado Billy Trout starts tracking down Gibbon's back story. Billy roots out Dr. Herman Volker, an East German scientist smuggled out by the CIA. To avenge an old family trauma, Volker has resurrected a secret formula. "Can you think of a more fitting punishment for a serial murderer than to be awake and aware in a coffin while his body slowly rots?" Volker's detailed, believable description of the unspeakable cocktail he's invented, right down to cribbing from The Serpent and the Rainbow, is as inventive as it is sickening. An outlandish but superfluous zombie yarn that is gruesome, imaginative and grateful to its inspirations.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 15, 2011

A prison doctor injects a condemned serial killer with a drug intended to keep his brain animate while his body rots in the grave. But the drug malfunctions, and the result is--surprise!--a zombie who makes a snack out of the mortician servicing his corpse. Of course, he's contagious, has passed on the infection, and--voila!--the zombie plague has begun. As it turns out, this particular infestation was orchestrated by the Reagan administration when it captured the Project Lucifer documents from the Soviet Union. Lucifer engineered the creation of "metabolically minimalized ambulatory organic hosts." Code for zombies? You bet. This is yet another government-engineered zombie plague. Maberry (Patient Zero), who has ended the world in previous novels, will not disappoint his fans with his latest mishmash of crime noir, horror, and gore. While zombie-savvy readers may become impatient at the length of time it takes the heroes to figure out that an apocalypse is in the offing--really, haven't they ever seen a George Romero film?--Maberry enthusiasts will love it. [Library marketing.]

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2011
The author of the Joe Ledger series sticks close to home, still writing about zombies, but this stand-alone effort is lighter than the Ledgers. Not an out-and-out comedy, it seems designed to provoke equal quantities of chuckles and screams. The set-up could have come straight from a grade-B horror flick: a rather twisted doctor injects a condemned prison inmate with a concoction that will keep the man's brain alive while his body deteriorates. After he's executed, the body is shipped off to his only living relative in a small Pennsylvania town, where the dead man proves he isn't so dead, after all. It's up to two local cops to figure out what's behind the sudden outbreak of gruesome mayhem. But even if they can wrap their heads around the truth, can they stop the evil before it speads through the country? Maberry continues his renovation of rickety old zombie themes, turning clich's into trendsetters. Fans of the genre will wantabsolutelyto read this highly entertaining yarn.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)