Necropolis PD, by
Nathan Sumsion (Parvus Press)
This debut novel from a small press is an interesting riff
on the typical “zombies = bad” trope. Sumsion’s city, Necropolis, is made up of
bits and pieces of forgotten things, whether they are articles of clothing,
furniture, or entire buildings. The place has the grimy, worn, gloomy aspect of
forgotten things, and it is into their worth that college student Jacob Green
stumbles. After being interrogated by terrifying dead men, he’s drafted into
the Necropolis Police Force as a detective, and his chief torturer, Marsh, is
his partner. Neither Marsh nor the other detectives are willing to help educate
Jacob, but the vampire Chief of Police insists that Jacob is crucial to solving
their current case: a series of murders of the revenant (dead) citizens. In
addition to Marsh, who slowly thaws toward Jacob, Jacob is psychically linked
with Ms. Greystone, a ghost, who is my favorite character in the book. She’s
brusque, efficient, dry-witted, and only half-there. The plot takes various
twists as Jacob struggles to learn police procedure while tracking down clues
and trying to integrate into the police department. The world of Necropolis
includes shudder-worthy sequences (the insanely violent child revenants in “The
Nursery,” for example) but also moments of humor and pathos. Needless to say,
Jacob turns out to be considerably more resourceful than his dead colleagues or
he himself give him credit for, much to my enjoyment.
The innovative
elements, character development, and intrigue kept me turning the pages. I’m
not an aficionado of zombie anything (movies, books, you name it) so aspects
that caught my attention as fresh might not affect an informed zombie fan in
the same way. However, Jacob and in particular Ms. Greystone rise above the
genre. At the same time, I found a number of literary flaws problematic. Both
the prose itself and the book are flabby in the sense of containing too much
that is repetitious, redundant, or unnecessary. The flashbacks, at first
confusing, became irritating because they only repeated information I had
already surmised and broke the forward momentum of the story. I hope that the
author learns to trust his readers to pick up subtle information instead of
needing to hammer it home repeatedly. The use of “some” (instead of “a” or
“the”) or “some kind of” are a bête noir of mine, and in almost all cases can
be excised without significant alteration in meaning. That said, these
shortcomings became less intrusive as the story proceeded and did not interfere
with my enjoyment of the way everything wrapped up.
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