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Kill Them All (2011)

by Harry Shannon(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Adventures In Television, Inc

series

The Dead Man

review 1: I've been falling behind in Lee Goldberg's and William Rabkin's Dead Man series. In the time since I read the fifth volume, The Blood Mesa, which was way back in the summer of last year, a lot has happened. The series is already up to about the eighth volume--maybe ninth by now--and the books even got picked up Amazon's publishing wing, 47 North. Bigger and better things, but are the books still bringing the goods?When last we saw our hero, he was in New Mexico as I recall thwarting a cult on the top of a mesa in the desert. In Kill Them All, Matt Cahill is wandering down a Nevada road until he finds himself in a desiccated "old west" town. And the sparse population is comprised of characters, each more eccentric than the last. After an impromptu display of his ass-kicking... more ability, Matt discovers there is an influence on a few people in town by who he suspects is Mr. Dark. But when he digs a little deeper on the outskirts at an old farm, he finds a whole lot more than he bargained for, including a brand new enemy who is out for blood--literally.The book is filled with action of every stripe. Fist fights, gun fights. About the only thing missing was a car chase. Kill Them All also feels like the most stand-alone of all the books since the very first one. The wandering stranger motif is in full effect and done quite well, though the action took away from some character development of the townsfolk that I thought could have used just a bit more attention. And while the callback to the overarching storyline didn't go the way I expected, and was hoping for considering how long it was since I'd read from this series, the new introductions put into the story by Harry Shannon were really intriguing and added a new dreadful angle to Matt Cahill's ordeal that should come into play very nicely in future editions.It's not a blowout return to the series, but that's on me given the amount of time it's been since I read The Blood Mesa, although the vibe of the Dead Man series is pitch perfect and the showdown with a gang of mercenaries was explosive literally and figuratively. Fans of the series ought to enjoy it, but newcomers are best to go back to the first book and work your way through. Pulpy, blood-soaked, sun-bleached fun.
review 2: With the announcement just a couple of weeks ago that the Dead Man series was picked up for publication through Amazon’s “47 North” imprint, I feel sorta bad posting a negative review of the fifth volume; I don’t want to poop on their parade.But I consider this the weakest entry in the series so far. Matt Cahill, the man who shouldn’t be alive but is, wanders into a small Nevada town (which is supposed to be a Old West town maintained for the tourists, even though we never see a single tourist) with a mysterious team of mercenaries after him. The town is cut off from the outside world by an obligatory contrivance, and Matt and a cadre of smalltown cliches (why would a town this small have a sheriff? come to think of it, why would any town have a sheriff, as it’s an elected county position?) have to hold off the mercenaries by themselves.It feels here like the series is spinning its wheels; fortunately, the one good point to the novel is that it introduces — or re-introduces, for the first time since the initial installment — that Cahill might be valuable to someone trying to find a means of immortality. So while Cahill is chasing Mr. Dark around the country — for no reason that’s all that clear, a weak point in the series concept — there is now established an organization chasing Cahill. Here’s hoping that that concept pays off in future installments, or the whole enterprise might peter out.Disclaimer: Because of the unelected dweebs at the FTC who wouldn’t know the First Amendment if it wore a thong and gave them a lap dance, I must hereby announce that the media reviewed herein was received gratis from the distributor of said media with the understanding that I would comment on said media in this blog. less

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