BOOK REVIEW - Tomorrow the Killing
The Review:
Geek Syndicate
with deft homage to The Big Sleep and Last Man Standing. Once again Polansky makes use of flashbacks to this world’s Great War to inform The Warden’s character, flesh out his history and shed a little light on the present case. I really loved these sections in the first book – could happily read a whole story in that setting – so I was thrilled to be going back there in Tomorrow, The Killing. He puts real-time in pondering the meaning of war and what it does to people. We witness scenes of pride and shame, blood and endless sucking mud. Propaganda encourages folk look back on it with nostalgia in their world (and ours) and, although the truth is sickening, there’s just something about the hellish atmosphere and desperate camaraderie that makes for compelling reading. “We weren’t heroes, my friend… At best we were victims.” With complex themes of corruption, regret and restitution it was never going to be a breezy book but it has a surprisingly light touch. The chapters are punchy, the locations are varied and this time I was kept guessing right up until the end – the mark of a good mystery. It was really good to see more of the city and its underworld figures. Low Town is developing nicel y as a living environ. I got a real sense of the web of politics and the balance of power shifting, without ever feeling like Basil Exposition was yammering in my ear.
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“Regret’s not enough – you have to pay for it.” If you read his fantasy noir The Straight Razor Cure you’ll have a good idea what to expect from Daniel Polansky’s follow-up: a hard-bitten hero; a dirty city, with dirtier secrets; the death of innocence and the blazing path of vengeance. What I didn’t expect was just how much Polansky would up his game. It’s a much stronger, more confident book, with a muscular plot and a tightly bound narrative.
Author: Daniel Polansky Publisher: Hodder
The Blurb:
Once he was a hero of the Great War, and then a member of the dreaded Black House. Now he is the criminal linchpin of Low Town. His name is Warden. He thought he had left the war behind him, but a summons from up above brings the past sharply, uncomfortably, back into focus. General Montgomery’s daughter is missing somewhere in Low Town, searching for clues about her brother’s murder. The General wants her found, before the stinking streets can lay claim to her, too. Dark, violent, and shot through with corruption, TOMORROW, THE KILLING is a fantastic successor to one of the most heralded fantasy debuts of recent times.
You haven’t read The Straight Razor Cure? It doesn’t matter. Like all the good pulp, these are stand alone adventures. Sure, you might have a shade more texture if you read them all in order, but Polansky does a cracking job of containing his stories. There’s none of these foreshadowings or cliffhanger endings that force you (cursing) straight back to the book shop. He does that with the quality of his writing. The past comes back to haunt The Warden once again as the great General Montgomery, now an old and broken man, contacts him to find his daughter and bring her home. Lost somewhere in the morass of Low Town – that wretched patch of filth the The Warden calls home – she is stirring up trouble in search of answers. The Warden may be a scumbag drug-dealer now, but he owes the General, and he may be the girl’s last chance to get out alive. What follows is a domino trail of destruction,