Synopsis
A gripping, snappy creature feature from the master of horror noir about two detectives—one dead, one living—hired by an embittered old landowner to banish a bloody cosmic monster from his ancestral home, perfect for fans of Cassandra Khaw, Charles Stross and Lucy A. Snyder.
Ford and Neuland are paranormal mercenaries—one living, one undead; one of them kills the undead, the other kills the living. When a job goes bad in New York, they head west to wait for the heat to cool down.
There, a young woman named Tilda Rosenbloom hires them on behalf of wealthy landowner, Shepherd Mansfield, to track and kill a demon haunting a mansion in remote northern California.
As Ford and Neuland investigate the creature they uncover a legacy of blood, sacrifice and slavery in the house. Forced to confront a powerful creature unlike anything they’ve faced before, they come to learn that the most frightening monster might not be the one they’re hunting…
Review
I was accidentally sent the second book in this series without owning or having read this one. A huge thanks to Caitlin at Titan Books for sending me this one so I could read and review both and for turning this into a happy accident!
This was a surprise for me and I went in blind. I love this mix of a buddy-cop feel and the entire criminal aspect of their lives. The juxtaposition of morally guided characters against the backdrop of their super dark employment worked wonders for me. It made the novella light and funny in a way I never expected, while still remaining in the mysterious horror genre.
Ford and Neuland are guns for hire. Maybe not your typical ones, as they often deal in the paranormal and supernatural world, and they never kill innocents. So when they catch wind that a job they were on was actually a farce, one that would harm someone unworthy of it, they make a not-so-kind decision to break their contract, and the contractor, and leave New York behind. This brings them to California, where the work is all but dried up for them as well. So when a woman, Tilda, shows up with a bag full of cash, they’re really at a loss for how they could turn the job down. A little house haunting detective work to follow, and hopefully the rest is history, a job well done.
I really loved the two main characters. Ford is a human man…well a living one. Neuland is a human man, just an undead one. Their partnership is easy, one kills the living, one kills the dead. Rinse and repeat. The inclusion of these intellectual zombies (if you will) right from the rip really grounded the world (or perhaps it should be ungrounded the natural world) in the fact that this was something other. A well done, sort of urban fantasy mystery creature feature horror all squished into one. I also like that while Neuland’s condition makes him stronger and harder to kill, there’s still this 50/50 partnership, if not brotherhood, between them. A lot of people in their world are disrespectful to the reanimated, but to Ford, he’s just his partner. And both of them are funny.
The novella also features these shorter kind of interlude chapters that feature the big bad creature they will eventually be searching for. At first, when I didn’t really know what was going on it threw me off a bit, but by the end it was something I hoped would continue into the sequel. Where the novella fell a tad short for me was the ending. There is action beats throughout, albeit brief due to the story’s length, the ending itself felt like a five page blip that didn’t quite climax enough to get a resolution. It kind of did a disservice to the monster by making things seem too easy. I still really enjoyed it, I just wanted more.
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