Wednesday, November 16, 2011

City of the Lost-Stephen Blackmore

City of the Lost


Stephen Blackmore

Daw, Jan 3 2012, $15.00

ISBN: 9780756407025



In Los Angeles Joe Sunday and his partner Julio Guerrera are enforcers working for mobster Simon Patterson. Though they mostly break a few bones, each has killed targets without a second thought. In a North Hollywood bar, Julio violently attacks Joe and the bartender before cutting his own throat. LAPD Detective Frank Tanake arrives and tells Joe to report anything suspiciously odd.



Simon explains to Joe that Sandro Giantetti who he killed decades ago murdered Julio. He assigns Joe to retrieve a stone from the elderly man. Julio’s wife Mariel returns Joe’s earlier call to tell him her spouse is home when she becomes hysterical. Julio smashes his beloved spouse into a wall as Joe enters the house. Sandro arrives and directs Julio to attack Joe. When Joe regains consciousness he realizes none of years of aches hurt. Sandro explains that Joe is his first success at reanimating a dead man. All hell breaks loose as Joe kills Simon for betraying him and Tanake shoots Sandro in the head. However, Tanake shows the non breathing Joe that Sandro posed in a Renaissance Era painting so will probably return to life. Joe knows the talisman he took from Sandro means a horde of zombies led by Sandro will come for him.



This is a brisk engaging zombie urban fantasy starring am antihero who has a strange values system as he has no compunctions being a hit man or cannibalizing a hooker, but feels he owes his partner by telling Julio’s wife that he is dead. Although the reason for Sandro’s experimentation comes late as this intuitively appears to conflict with his centuries-old longevity, sub-genre readers will enjoy the reanimated hit man takes Southern California.



Harriet Klausner

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