Czech Gypsy Porn Star Zombie Killer, Drifters and Thieves

Kill the Dead is the second in the Sandman Slim series. If you like urban fantasy, noir, mysteries, or really well written books you should be reading the Sandman Slim books. Let me repeat this:  You should be reading Sandman Slim!

I am listening, audio style, while I pack up a friend’s house. McLeod Andrews is an amazing reader. Listening to James Stark (aka Jim, Jimmy, Sandman Slim the monster who kills monsters, or Abomination) drink, smoke, steal cars and serve up shit to people who think their shit doesn’t stink is deeply satisfying while I carry out the mundane task of packing things carefully and throwing away trash. He prefers to be called Stark, by the way.

After saving the world, Stark now freelances for Lucifer and for the Golden Vigil, even though the Vigil’s angel, Aelita, thinks Stark is an abomination. He lives over the video store, Max Overdrive, with his “roommate” Kasabian, who is still a head without a body. Stark is drifting. He wreaked an incomplete revenge, discovered he is half angel, killed off most of the Kissi (trouble causing proto angels), and left his arch-enemy, Mason Faim, alive in Hell.

Into this mix comes Brigitte Bardot – a Czech porn star and zombie killer. She teaches Stark how to kill zombies and is generally awesome. The women in Sandman Slim’s universe are grounded in the noir tradition of the bad girl. It could be said that Alice is fridged. Her murder motivates Stark to break out of Hell and rampage. That would be selling Alice short, though. Sure she’s dead, but she visits Stark in his dreams and has her own opinions. And sure Brigitte is a porn star, but that’s just a good cover for her real profession – zombie killing. She trades on her sexuality, but always on her terms. These women have agency and lives (or after-lives) away from Stark.

Kill the Dead follows a standard noir detective plot. It opens with Stark on a mundane mission (killing a teenage vampire girl) that later ties in to the ongoing mysteries of the attempts on Lucifer’s life and the sudden appearance of zombies. But bigger forces are at work. Lucifer want to go home to Heaven, Mason Faim is trying to overthrow Lucifer in Hell, and Aelita is trying to rid Earth of abominations. Stark is in the middle of it all, not as smart as he needs to be, but smarter and more tenacious than his enemies would like.

Kadrey has given Stark a lot of chemistry with his friends, frenemies and enemies.  His dialogue sparkles and his observations about Life, LA, and the Universe are thoughtful and colorful. Stark hates LA and it’s people with a fiery hatred born in love.

If Jesus, Jesse James, and a herd of pink robot unicorns strolled in walking on water, this bunch wouldn’t even look up.

As great as his disdain for the people of LA may be, he doesn’t really want to watch it burn. He dislikes the rich and privileged, and identifies with the down and out and the monsters. In true anti-hero tradition, he is a complicated character, more prone to violence than talking, but he is trying to learn to use his indoor voice, “like a big boy.”

Like Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead constantly seems like it’s about to go off the rails. Kadrey’s command of language and ability to flesh out characters with just a few strokes grounds a plot that would be eye-rollingly ridiculous in a lesser writers hands. In Kadrey’s capable hands, the baroque twists and turns keep me engaged until the very last word. It takes me hours to let go of Stark’s world when I finish a book.