I missed the first novel in Martin Rose’s new undead private investigator series, Bring Me Flesh, I’ll Bring Hell (Talos, October 2014), and that’s beginning to look like a mistake. An intriguing mix of Raymond Chandler and George Romero, the first novel introduced us to “pre-deceased private investigator” Vitus Adamson, kept ambulatory only by hourly administrations of a powerful drug, who finds himself hot on the trail of a missing boy… one who bears a more-than-uncanny resemblance to his own long-dead son. Scott Kenemore called the novel “The shot in the arm that the zombie genre needs… Vitus Adamson shambles on the scene as an undead Sam Spade of the very best sort.”

As the second novel opens, Adamson is still picking up the pieces from the events of the first — not least of which is an unexpected return to the land of the living.

Here’s the book description:

Vitus Adamson has a second chance at life now that he’s no longer a zombie, but after killing his brother Jamie, Vitus lands in prison on murder charges. Jamie’s death exposes secret government projects so deep in the black they cannot be seen — without Vitus, that is.

Sprung from jail, the government hires Vitus to clean up Jamie’s mess, but tracking down his brother’s homemade monsters gone rogue is easier said than done. A convicted killer safely behind bars may not be so safe after all when it appears he is still committing murder through his victim’s dreams. High on Atroxipine (the drug that once kept him functioning among the living) and lapsing into addiction, Vitus’s grip on reality takes a nasty turn when his own dreams start slipping sideways.

His problems multiply as he deals with his failed friendship with wheelchair-bound officer Geoff Lafferty, his wrecked romance with the town mortician Niko, government agents working for his father, sinister figures lurking in the shadows, and least of all, the complications of learning how to be human again.

Secret agents, conspiracy theories, broken hearts and lonely souls, the siren song of prescription drugs… In My Loaded Gun, My Lonely Heart, readers are invited to discover life after undeath, where there are no happy endings.

My Loaded Gun, My Lonely Heart will be published by Talos on November 3, 2015. It is 227 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition.

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