Portlandtown

July 2, 2012
Cookbook author DeBorde’s suspenseful and energetic fiction debut, a horror–western set in a vividly depicted 1887 Pacific Northwest, revitalizes pulp tropes with evocative imagery and a character-driven story. After retired marshal Jim Kleberg is discovered digging up graves in search of a man whose name he has forgotten, he reluctantly goes to Portland, Ore., to live with his daughter, Katie, who has a talent for hiding; his son-in-law, Joseph, a blind man with otherworldly senses; and their two clever children. Meanwhile, local outcast Henry Macke resurrects the corpse of the “Hanged Man” as a zombie who goes searching for a demonic gun and vengeance against the befuddled Jim. Soon the marshal’s family is battling an onslaught of zombies with the help of Faustian antihero Andre Labeau, an occultist seeking redemption. Deborde crafts an exhilarating hybrid of grit, guts, dusty cowpokes, and rotting flesh, honoring genre conventions without succumbing to cliché and anchoring black magic in realistic contexts of politics and family dynamics. The only flaw is a “surprise” ending that screams for sequels.

Starred review from September 15, 2012

When the town gravedigger discovers retired marshal James Kleberg digging up the corpse of a man whose name Kleberg can't remember, Kleberg's son-in-law Joseph Wylde brings him to live with his family in the boomtown of Portland. Small-time criminal Henry Macke, however, remembers what Kleberg forgot; with the aid of a book of spells he revives the corpse of the Hanged Man, a legendary gunslinger. Soon, the Hanged Man is on the hunt for Kleberg, the man responsible for his death. VERDICT DeBorde's extraordinary first novel, a dark fantasy set in the Old West, tells a compelling tale of the battle between evil personified and a remarkable family with special abilities. Fans of Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series will enjoy discovering this accomplished writer.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2012
It's been a decade since the death of the Hanged Man, an outlaw who managed to survive the gallows, not to mention 11 bullets, before being brought down by the Marshal. But the Marshal is going senile, and after he's taken in by his bookseller-investigator son-in-law, Joseph, the Hanged Man's grave goes untended. Enter budding scofflaw Henry, who not only unburies the infamous corpse but also reads aloud from the Hanged Man's book of curses. Whoever said westerns are dead was wrongthey're undead, at least in this case, with the zombified Hanged Man soon commanding a fetid, shambling army to take revenge upon the Marshal and his family. Though the year is 1887, DeBorde dispenses with era-stylized dialogue, choosing instead to focus on the tightening of the well-populated and many-fronted plot, as both the Hanged Man and a noble shaman close in on Joseph and the Marshal just as the Portland Rain Festival is hit with an epic flood. If period zombies crawling out of the rainy muck is your kind of set piece, this is your western.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)