Childish MC will either irritate or delight you!

When Turney Pimms answers a hand-drawn job advertisement with the Undead Detective Agency, he doesn’t expect to being working with a decidedly odd ancient vampire and an irascible zombie. Over his long unlife, Octavius Evander has avoided relationships with humans - they never seem to last very long - but he can’t help being drawn to Turney, his new driver and assistant detective. I’m on the fence about this whimsical paranormal romance. While the colloquial writing is clumsy in places and needs a good edit, it does suit the playful tone. It reminds me a lot of Lisa Henry and Sarah Honey’s Tales of Aguillon series which is equally zany and child-like. And Octavius IS a man-child. He pouts and giggles, he claps his hands in excitement, and he’s often scolded by the other characters for acting without thinking. The perpetual innocence about the world and ignorance of human ways is hard to reconcile with such an ancient vampire - we’re talking abut someone born over 2,000 years ago. We aren’t privy to what motivates him to style the office in a 1920s theme or make a glitter scrapbook to solve a case, but I’m guessing he just hates being bored and likes to be entertained. Look, despite the gore and sex scenes, this isn’t a serious story and it’s not trying to be - that will irritate some and delight others - I warmed to it over time. One pet peeve was the term “the male” which Shelby Rhodes uses over 50 times instead of ‘he / him’, ‘the man’, or the person’s name. It felt impersonal and it rankled, but that’s probably just me. I’ve really enjoyed audio narrator Lance West’s other performances and he does another amazing job here. He totally embraces the crazy humour, including a squeaky bat voice when Octavius transforms, and he deserves a lot of credit for making the audiobook work so well.

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