It's noir of the living dead in this detective novel that's "part Chandler, part Romero . . . This book is what zombie fans have been waiting for" (Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award–winning author).

Who does a zombie detective go to when he's falling apart? For Vitus Adamson, mostly upright and functioning, it's Niko. Whenever Vitus is injured, the bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes, a Bettie Page bob, and a way with corpses, helps to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients looking for their lost son draw the private investigator into his most dangerous job yet.

Vitus is horrified to discover that the couple's missing boy is a dead ringer for his own long-deceased son. Questioning the events of his tormented past, he faces the possibility that the wife and child he thought he'd eaten ten years ago in a zombie-fugue have somehow survived. Or is it just wishful thinking designed to pull him into an elaborate trap?

In "this hard-boiled homage to zombie fiction," an emotional, blood-spattered journey of betrayal and quest for redemption begins (Publishers Weekly). The result is
"Dashiell Hammett meets Max Brooks and James Ellroy . . . I think [Vitus] can safely expect to 'live' in the annals of genre fiction for many years to come" (Scott Kenemore, bestselling author of Zombie, Ohio).