Publication: 2nd April 2011
Publisher: Penguin Australia
Pages: 306
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Age Appropriate: 16+
Bryn Davis knows working at Fairview Mortuary isn't the most glamorous career choice, but at least it offers stable employment--until she discovers her bosses using a drug that resurrects the clientele as part of an extortion racket. Now, Bryn faces being terminated--literally, and with extreme prejudice.
Wit the help of corporate double-agent Patrick McCallister, Bryn has a chance to take down the bigger problem--pharmaceutical company Pharmadene, which treats death as the ultimate corporate loyalty program. She'd better do it fast, before she becomes a zombie slave--a real working stiff. She'd be better off dead...
My Thoughts.
I am a huge fan of Caine's Morganville Vampire series, I was extremely excited to start this series being very interested in the concept of the dead being brought back to life, but not being Zombies as such but acting like normal, everyday people, and as long as they keep taking the drug Returne daily it will stop them from decomposing.
Bryn's first embalming instructor had told her, straight up, that two kinds of people entered the death business: freaks and true believers.
Bryn starts her first day at Fairview Mortuary learning the ropes from her boss, everything seems to be going smoothly until she overhears a conversation about her boss charging money to bring people back from the dead and then proceeding to charge for the injection of Returne each day to keep a person alive, of course Bryn gets caught and is subsequently killed, and then wakes up after being given the drug by a couple of guys Patrick and Joe, who brought her back so she can help them find the person responsible for illegally obtaining the drug from it's manufacturer Pharmadene and selling it.
Bryn of course doesn't really know anything so she is told that for her to continually recieve the drug she is to continue her work at the mortuary in hopes that the person selling the drugs gets in contact with her.
Joe becomes her bodyguard and also comes to work with her at the mortuary while Patrick who is head of security at Pharmadene helps her while also running hot and cold with his feelings for Bryn.
"Bryn, my job is to make sure that you don't do anything stupid. So yeah. I followed you. When you leave your house in the middle-class version of ninja clothes, I pay attention.
I loved the interaction between Bryn and Patrick and I had my fingers crossed that something would happen between these two with his dry sense of humour.
Joe was another character that I adored, inside he's just a big softie, none more so than with his wife and kids.
You spend a lot of time while reading this book trying to guess who's really the good and bad guys and trying to figure out what the next plot twist will be
I loved Caine's foray into Urban Fantasy and I can't wait to see what's next for Bryn and the gang in the next book.
I give this 4/5.