Looking For a Good Book

Detective Raphael Styx of Ostend, Belgium, is on the hunt for a notorious serial killer known as “The Stuffer” because he fills his victims full of sand and then poses them as ‘art’ in public places. Styx is a bit late in life, his marriage is on the rocks, his hip hurts him all the time, and, yeah, he’s a bit corrupt to boot. But even with ties to the Belgian underworld, Styx doesn’t have any leads.  If he wants to solve this before the ambitious new guy, Detective Delacroix, makes the case, he’ll need to think outside the box a bit.

Detective Styx is just about to nab the notorious killer through a chance encounter when he is killed by a gunshot to the chest. But Styx is too stubborn to let something as simple as death stop him from catching a murderer – his own murderer!

Styx recognizes his now unique opportunity to move around in the dark alleys and slums as he blends in with the criminal element. But his undead, zombie self has other issues that will distract him. His flesh is rotting and he has a hunger for human flesh. He’s decided to spare is wife his present status and allows her to grieve for him at his funeral (held, of course, without a body since he’s still using it).

Needing some human help to bring the killer to justice, Styx lets Detective Delacroix in on his current state of being. He also asks the younger detective to look after his wife – Styx is beginning to understand just what he’s missing out on, now that he’s dead.

Can a dead and a living detective work together to capture a killer?

I liked the concept of this book and I definitely wasn’t sure what I was going to get. It seemed like it might lean toward humorous absurd, but, while there is some humor, this felt quite dark – more noir detective fiction paired with the supernatural. This was really good.

But there’s a rather odd dichotomy here. Styx spends a lot of time ruminating on what it means to be human, now that he’s not. The loss of family, which he mostly ignored prior to his death, is now extremely important. It’s a nice lesson, but it overwhelms the mystery story as we near the end.

Sadly, I got bored. And who gets bored with a book with a zombie main character? Well, if the zombie is sad and depressed at his station in life, I do.

The book was originally published in Flemish/Dutch and I suspect it was translated, though no translator is listed in my copy (perhaps it’s the person listed as “with Josh Pachter” on the title page).  I always wonder, when I read a translated book that I don’t enjoy, how much of that falls on the translator. But given that the editor, in a letter to the reader at the start of the book, refers to this as “atmospheric” I suspect the moody, brooding tone comes from the author.

Looking for a good book? Styx, by Bavo Dhooge, is a moody, brooding melodrama detective/paranormal story of a dirty cop who chases his own killer as his zombified body decays.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Styx

author: Bavo Dhooge

publisher: Simon & Schuster/Simon451

ISBN: 9781476784649

hardcover, 304 pages