Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim rides again! And picks up some new jackets along the way… (Voyager)

Anyone who’s been reading CR for the past year will know that I’m a huge fan of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series. I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed the first four, and I am impatient to get my hands on the fifth in the series, Kill City Blues, to be published in hardcover this August in the UK (artwork above), and July in the US (artwork below).

In addition to book five, the first four are getting released in paperback in the UK as well. Voyager has commissioned some pretty cool, retro, quite ‘LA-punk’ covers for the books. The first two, Sandman Slim and Kill the Dead, will be published June 20th…

These will be followed by Aloha From Hell and Devil Said Bang, on July 5th and July 18th, respectively…

If you haven’t already tried this series, I highly recommend that you do. With the new editions, I can’t think of a better time, either. Even better, if you’re a UK Kindle owner, they’re currently discounted on Amazon…

This is one of my favourite series, which has also managed to maintain its high quality (something that seems rather rare, these days…). Deliciously dark, original, well-crafted, and often surprising.

“Kill The Dead” by Richard Kadrey (Voyager)

Sandman Slim rides again. Kills some zombies.

James Stark, a.k.a. Sandman Slim, crawled out of Hell, took bloody revenge for his girlfriend’s murder, and saved the world along the way. After that, what do you do for an encore? You take a lousy job tracking down monsters for money. It’s a depressing gig, but it pays for your beer and cigarettes. But in L.A., things can always get worse.

Like when Lucifer comes to town to supervise his movie biography and drafts Stark as his bodyguard. Sandman Slim has to swim with the human and inhuman sharks of L.A.’s underground power elite. That’s before the murders start. And before he runs into the Czech porn star who isn’t quite what she seems. Even before all those murdered people start coming back from the dead and join a zombie army that will change our world and Stark’s forever.

Death bites. Life is worse. All things considered, Hell’s not looking so bad.

It’s a little tricky to review this book, for two reasons. First, to go into too much detail will throw out a ton of spoilers for the first book. Second, I’d basically just be repeating all the praise I wrote in my review of Sandman Slim… Nevertheless, allow me to repeat myself…