Kindle-fied Review 4: FEAR THE NIGHT, by Julia Madeleine/THE DARK AFFAIR, by Allan Leverone

Picking up where Paul Brazill left off, two more exceptional writers continue the strange adventures of Roman Dalton, werewolf P.I.
In FEAR THE NIGHT, the amazingly talented Julia Madeleine takes Roman away from his usual stomping grounds in The City and to Quebec, where the search for a missing girl leads him into a direct confrontation with gruesome zombies. The climactic scene is one of the best choreographed I’ve read in a while, and beautifully gory. Great fun.

Allan Leverone picks up Roman’s story with style and flair in THE DARKE AFFAIR, which finds our hero back in The City and once again facing the undead hordes of an old enemy. But to complicate matters, a federal agent with shady motives appears—and disappears—forcing Roman on a rescue mission to save a man who may wind up being his own doom. Great, high-octane stuff.

Drunk on the Moon, by Paul Brazill

Roman Dalton doesn’t WANT to kill people. It’s just in his blood. See, three times a month he becomes stricken with a curse that transforms him from an ex-cop turned P.I. into a blood-thirsty werewolf. And it’s a good thing, too, considering that Dalton’s seedy underworld is infested with all manner of gangster zombies, lizard-men and other creatures of the night. It’s good to have a leg up in this crazy world…

A werewolf/private dick… if you’re like me, you’re thinking, “Damnit, why didn’t I think of that?” Well, you’re too late, man, because Paul Brazill already managed to sift through our collective unconscious and pluck this gem of an idea out. And that’s ALSO a good thing, because he manages to do something with it that most of us wouldn’t be able to. He saves it from becoming corny or annoying or trite by making Roman Dalton a genuinely interesting character, surrounded by an equally interesting supporting cast.

Drunk on the Moon, the first installment in a promised series of stories about Roman, is an oddly fragmented, episodic thing, designed to jangle your nerves a bit and upset your expectations.

Throughout, Paul Brazill gives us the flavorful language and keen observations about surroundings for which he’s become so well-regarded, and the violence, when it happens, is sudden and unexpected and over before you can blink. Again, that’s Brazill messing with your expectations about werewolf stories.

Future stories about Roman the werewolf P.I. will be written by a wide assortment of writers, all onboard to see what they can do with Brazill’s vision, so I imagine we’re going to see some amazingly varied approaches. But there’s no question that Brazill has set the bar high with Drunk on the Moon…
.99 cents on the Kindle. A ferocious bargain.