If Loving The Wrong Dead Guy Is Wrong, We Don’t Want to Be Right
After the end-of-the-world antics of 2016’s The Everything Box, I figured Richard Kadrey would have a tough time out-apocalypsing himself with the second book in his series about the misadventures of the agents of the Department of Peculiar Science. The Wrong Dead Guy has taught me never to underestimate an author who has been immortalized with his own action figure.
Of course, it takes more than a hunk of plastic to make a great writer (though it’s an epic achievement on many levels). There’s just no denying the guy’s talent—book after book, series after series, he never lacks for the ability to up the bizarre supernatural ante for his left-of-center characters. Consider the Sandman Slim series; Kadrey has dragged his anti-hero to hell and back so many times I’ve lost count, yet each time, the stakes get higher and higher. Pick up a Kadrey book, and you’ll know one thing: the madness has been dialed to 11, and the author hasn’t even broken a sweat.
The Wrong Dead Guy revisits his newest batch of supernatural misfits, last seen trying their best to save the world in The Everything Box. Though this is an all-new adventure, the locale is once again modern day Los Angeles, a comically volatile city where magic (good, bad, or otherwise) exists—as do zombies, demons, monsters, spirits, vampires, werewolves, and any other creepy-crawly entity Kadrey can imagine. And he has a very good imagination.
The series follows highly-skilled, fast-talking thief Charlie “Coop” Cooper, whose former specialty was illegally acquiring magical objects for a fee. These days, he’s been recruited against his will by the mysterious and all-seeing Department of Peculiar Science, a top-secret government agency that exists solely to do battle with the forces of evil. Coop is Kadrey’s pivot point for all of the apocalyptic action, and this time the end of the world has taken the form of a cranky 3,000-year-old lovesick mummy with nothing less than utter global destruction and complete human domination on his ancient brain. That the DoPS is to blame for his unfortunate resurrection is beside the point; who among us can claim to never have opened the wrong dusty sarcophagus of a long-not-quite-dead Egyptian wizard?
Along the way, Coop crosses paths with a rogue fortune teller, an elephant with a big secret, and a gun-toting car salesman—when a high-stakes battle against Harkhuf the psychotic mummy is the least of your problems, you might want to find a new line of work. Magical amulets, vengeful mailroom clerks, desktop squids, and the Mysteriis Ex Mortuis (a highly coveted book of dangerous resurrection spells) only add to the whirlwind of craziness. The phrase “never a dull moment” may havebeen coined with a Ricard Kadrey caper in mind.
Sure, the storyline is wacky, but Kadrey surrounds Coop with a dementedly colorful gaggle of friends, co-workers, and enemies—few if any of whom are your standard-issue human. While we revisit plenty of familiar faces from The Everything Box as they help or hinder Coop along the way, the bizarro highlight of The Wrong Dead Guy is a completely brand new character: the scene-stealing Dr. Lupinsky, a part-cat/part-robot Egyptologist with metal octopus arms. He is as joyously weird an addition as he sounds. And don’t worry: the doc is one of the good guys.
Unlike the comparatively grim Sandman Slim books—which a still a hoot, if in their own dark way—this series sets the bar for absurd humor exceptionally high. In the movie world, the Sandman books would be a R-rated, while Coop’s adventures would be pushing the boundaries of PG-13. Even with plenty of death and destruction on display, this is laugh-out-loud funny stuff, as Kadrey proves himself a master of manic, rapid-fire storytelling, hilarious wisecracks, and relentless supernatural lunacy.
Who knew the end of the world could be so much fun?
The Wrong Dead Guy is available now ina signed edition from Barnes & Noble.