Dead City

The gulf coast of Texas suffers five hurricanes in three weeks, leaving thousands dead and displacing even more. San Antonio was thankfully spared much of the devastation, but even so, Office Eddie Hudson and the rest of the police force face a busy night with the influx of survivors...and something else. During a routine call about a possibly burglary, Eddie and his partner Chris spot a lone woman, disoriented, moving slowly, with something spilled across the front of her shirt. As they watch, a few more people stumble out of a nearby building, with the same slow movements, but they don't notice the officers. Then, Eddie and Chris call out to them, and the group shambles toward them, paying no attention to the officers' calls to stop. show more They fire bean bags rounds at the advancing group without so much as slowing them down and soon find themselves surrounded.

The situation goes from bad to worse when Chris is knocked to the ground by a woman who begins clawing and biting him. With some effort, Eddie frees his partner and they manage to escape for a time. All the while, Chris begins to show signs of sickness and quickly deteriorates. It's only when he dies then comes back to life that Eddie realizes how truly horrific the situation is.

Racing against time -- and a horde of the waling dead -- Eddie's only thought as he fights his way across San Antonio is for his wife and newborn son's safety.

"Dead City" is full of a relentless (and gruesome) zombie goodness. Just when you hope Eddie's safe, more of those slow-moving terrors somehow rat him out of his hiding hole, and you wonder right along with him where the hell they keep coming from. The story moves at an incredibly fast pace, keeping me riveted at this one night in the life of Eddie Hudson trying to reach his family. And I wouldn't want to run into Eddie -- any survivors he found wound up as zombie food.

If you're in the mood for a quick zombie fix, this is a great book to satisfy your cravings. show less

If you like your zombies fashioned after the slow, shambling, lurching variety and are looking for a good, plain old dead coming back to life novel, look no further. Joe McKinney knows how to spin a post apocalyptic style story. Plenty of gore and action with characters that represent your average citizen put into a dreadful situation. The author even raises a few ethical questions as to how a society should handle such creatures. Don’t worry, there’s no preaching here by the author; just something to think about.

If I had a complaint it would be his use of “fast movers” from time to time. Some of the zombies have more physical strength and speed than others which gives his hero more of a challenge in various scenes. This seems show more to be the sole reason they appear and without a foundation for their existence it comes across as a cheap way to liven up the hero’s struggle for survival. Regardless, I read this over a couple of days (and would have read it in one sitting if my family allowed me) because I couldn’t tear myself away from finding out what happens. Hopefully McKinney will release a new novel soon. show less

(Re-posted from http://theturnedbrain.blogspot.com)

"These aren't your mother's zombies!" cries the tagline on the front of Joe McKinney's 'Dead City.' Which leads me to believe that reading the book is not actually a part of a tagwriter's job description. To me, 'these aren't your mother's zombies' is a way of saying, 'check it, these zombies are new and different and unlike the zombies of your mother's day.' Except that I can't remember the last time I encountered a zombie story as old school as 'Dead City.' These are your mother's zombies. Your mum went to high school with these zombies, and when she sees them in the supermarket she stops to catch up for, like, hours.

But it's not a bad thing! In fact, the "tradionalness," if you will, show more of Dead City was probably my favourite aspect of the book. It seems that as zombies have grown increasingly fashionable authors have been trying to put a new spin on them. It's like zombies alone aren't enough any more, it has to be steampunk zombies (Boneshaker), or blogger zombies (Alison Hewitt is Trapped) or thinking zombies (Warm Bodies) which is fine and good, but you know, sometimes you just want to read about zombies.

And on that, McKinney delivers. The book is set in San Antonio and follows policeman Eddie through the first night of a sweeping zombie invasion. He wants to get back to his wife and kid, and there are a bazillion zombies to get past first.

What can I say about this book? If you like zombies, you'll enjoy it. If you're sick of zombies, you probably won't. McKinney's skill lies in writing tense and effective action scenes. He doesn't fall into the repetitive traps of some zombie novels, instead he thrusts Eddie into a number of different situations that keep things interesting and exciting.

McKinney is also very, very skilled at scene setting. He has that rare ability to paint a detailed mind picture in your head with just a single sentence. I can't remember the last time I encountered such vivid scenes in any book. McKinney has a knack for capturing quiet moments amidst all the zombie carnage, I really can't praise his descriptive skill highly enough.

He's less skillful when it comes to dialogue. Nothing the character's said ever rang entirely true, and he had a habit of using characters as an excuse to launch into hamfisted philosophising. (Are zombies people too? Did mankind bring them on themselves? Blah, blah, get to the brains!) There were also some inconsistencies in his plotting. Some things just seemed too convenient or easy, there were a few ideas that just didn't go anywhere, and the ending was way sudden.

Really, the ending didn't seem like the end of a book so much as it did the end of a really long prologue. Which normally I would hate like nothing else (it's the reason I never read beyond Charlie Higson's 'The Enemy...'), but by the end of Dead City I found myself more intrigued than annoyed and I can easily see myself picking up the next book in the series.

McKinney may not has written a book that offers a new twist on zombies, but that's exactly what I liked so much about it. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. show less

Must I summarize the book? Do I have to? Can't you just accept there is a zombie outbreak and leave it at that? Oh fine. Eddie is a cop, he gets a call and when he shows up there are people trying to eat him. Shortly thereafter you discover they aren't people but zombies. There, that'll have to be good enough.

There is a lot of action in this book. I mean a lot. In fact, that's all there is. You see, the main character will find himself in a precarious situation involving (you guessed it,) zombies. He will escape spectacularly and a few pages later find himself in a similar situation. The entire book involves Eddie dispatching one wave of zombies after another, wave after wave after wave, with an obnoxious 'temporary' character or 2 show more thrown in for good measure, and then there is a big magnificent action sequence not unlike the countless other ones in the book the brings the novel to a rip-roaring semi-conclusion.

There really isn't anything worthwhile about the book, aside from a way to entertain yourself for a few hours. Even then, there are better books for that. There are better zombie books for that. Still, if you're into this sort of thing and are looking for the next zombie fix, it'll do I suppose. Will I read the rest of the series? Meh, probably. Would I recommend other people start it? Probably not. show less

The first in a trilogy Dead City tells of a zombie-like infection that arises from the flood waters around Huston, Texas. In a matter of days this infection has spread throughout Texas and along the gulf coast. In this first book, the action is set in San Antonio as in a matter of hours the city undergoes a massive infection and the risen zombies outnumber the living. The main character, Eddy Hudson is a policeman and is on his regular patrol duty, his day and night quickly shifts to horror as he fights to survive and reach his family, not knowing their fate.

Most of the action takes place over the course of one night, and the action is non-stop. I class this type of thriller as a “popcorn thriller”, one that you just buckle in and show more go for the ride. A quick read, but a very gory and violent one, so not a book for the delicate or faint-hearted. As zombie stories go, I would class this one as about average, it hasn’t got the staying power of World War Z that lingers in mind long after reading it, neither do the characters appeal as much as the ones in The Walking Dead series.

I will be continuing on with the series simply because they are already on my shelves. If I didn’t already own them I probably wouldn’t be in any hurry to continue on. Overall, a basic action thriller, long on action but short on story and character development. show less

This is a fairly good zombie thriller. I liked the main character. I liked that the zombies were called zombies and not something else because the author doesn't want to acknowledge the existing zombie lore, that there is a zombie nerd who dispenses zombie knowledge gleaned from sitting around on the internet with other nerds fantasizing about the zombie apocalypse (yeah, that's you, fella). I liked the fact that no character was safe, and how the madness of the survivors was just as dangerous as the zombies themselves. The writing is good, and the action is pretty brutal and believable. When the action is fast and flowing the writing really shines. There is some nice character development, and some of the quieter scenes are very show more effective.

I didn't like the repetitive nature of the chase that makes up the body of the story. That went on too long with too many turns, dead ends, and descriptions of turns and dead ends. I understand showing the reader the hopelessness and despair and pure frustration of the situation the main character is in, but there must be a better way to do it that doesn't bore or frustrate the reader.

All in all, there were plenty of things I really enjoyed about this book. The main flaws for me were in the structure of the story, and the steps the author took in telling the story. It could have been a little shorter, a little faster paced at times, and that would make one mean book. show less

Fun book and a fast read. If you're looking for depth, you won't find it here, but if you're in the mood for a fast-paced, fun, zombie read, then this definitely fits the bill! Nice brain candy between "heavier" reads:)