Reviewer
Lavanya Karthik: Lavanya is from Mumbai, India and is a licensed
architect and consultant in environmental management. She lives in
Mumbai with her husband and six-year old daughter. She loves reading
and enjoys a diverse range of authors across genres.
Click Here To Purchase Dead Mann Walking: A Hessius Mann Novel
Author: Stefan Petrucha
Publisher: RoC Books
ISBN: 978-0-451-46421-7
Stefan
Petrucha could well be regarded something of an authority on the
undead. His previous books, Blood Prophecy and Breaking
Down – a razor sharp parody of Stephenie Meyer’s word- heavy
best seller – were both successful explorations of the vampire
genre. With Dead Mann Walking , he rewrites the rulebook of all
things zombie .
Hessius Mann is, to paraphrase the book’s
cover, dead but still kicking. Brought to life after being wrongly
executed for the murder of his wife, Mann is doomed to a life of
immortality, fitful memory and the very real possibility of
becoming an oozer, a dangler or just going feral in the best
traditions of a George Romero chompfest. He spends his time
moonlighting as a detective, keeping his secretary away from
drugs and his reanimated body in one piece. He isn’t
alone – Mann is one of thousands of people revived by a new
chemical process that the American government enthusiastically
endorses, before common sense – and some nasty side effects- kick
in, and the nation is now knee deep in revived relatives and
beloved pets that no one wants around anymore. Striding the
twilight zone between terrified livebloods and shantytowns
brimming with the abandoned undead (called chakz), Mann is one of the
lucky ones – in possession of both an intact body (that he
strengthens when required with office supplies) and enough of an
intelligence to function among the living.
On the trail of a
missing chak who is heir to a considerable fortune, Mann finds
himself in the middle of a far more sinister plot. Someone is out
hunting and dismembering chakz, and keeping their heads for
souvenirs. And they just might have something to do with the murder
of his wife as well. Mann’s trail leads him into a ghoulish
underworld where chakz – men, women, even children- are
preyed on by humans ; in a world of animated corpses, the real
monsters are all human.
Dead Mann Walking is gritty
stuff – well written, gripping, darkly humorous and very
disturbing. Mann is a strange hero –troubled , irrevocably doomed ,
quite literally without a life, yet wonderfully humane.
Author Petrucha also makes you think - his zombies could be a
metaphor for just about any marginalized group in a paranoid society
that has faced suspicion, stereotyping and oppression. As
their unlikely champion, Mann looks set to go some interesting and
thought provoking places, and I look forward to see him go where no
fictional zombie has before.