There’s no denying the power inherent in a name; most especially, the power in a title. There’s a reason almost every movie made out of a Philip K. Dick novel has been re-dubbed. Bladerunner is way cooler than “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”; Total Recall has it all over “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale.” This is also the reason so many B-movies find themselves with “Also Known As” listings on the IMDb -- it’s marketing flacks trying to make them sound better. Our Hollywood Geek, David Rosiak, knows well the power of a title: his and Matt Chernov’s Hard Ride to Hell was selected from a script slush pile due to that very important factor, and has since been made into a kick-ass horror flick.

And this is another tale that entices you in with its very name: Death Most Definite.

Digging through the stack of upcoming books for our painstakingly assembled Calendar a few issues back, a title like Death Most Definite stood out as one that needed further investigation. And its cover, which features a handsome man in a black suit looking supplicating yet powerful, along with the tagline: “Reaping – it’s a grim job but someone’s got to do it” sold me utterly. I didn’t even need to read the blurb. Death Most Definite would be one of the few new releases honored with a Geek Speak review. (We’re extremely selective, as you may have noticed.) ‘Cause that title, that cover, that tagline… they totally worked for me.

I dove into the book eagerly, and was surprised to discover that it was written by a fellow Australian and is set in -- of all places -- Brisbane. For those unfamiliar with this tropical coastal locale, think Miami but with the bilingual storefronts featuring Japanese instead of Spanish. And with more cane toads.

It is in this somewhat obscure city (home of the author, it transpires) that we find one Steven de Selby, a lackadaisical reaper -- or “Pomp”, as they’re called in Jamieson’s world, short for Psychopomp, which is a guide of souls out of classical mythology but which every time I read it makes me think of “pompatus of love” from that song “The Joker” -- who works in the family business and has, by his own admission, never been one to work terribly hard. Steve’s the kind of guy who shows up, sends his assigned shade off to the afterlife, and collects his pay check. This isn’t Dead Like Me, where the reapers are reanimated souls and forced to eke out an existence with flexible day jobs. In this mythology, Pomps are born, not made, and dealing with death pays quite nicely, due to a well managed stock portfolio and diversified business model. Indeed, the industry of shepherding the deceased out of this plane of existence is wholly controlled by a company called Mortmax -- surely there’s some kind of anti-trust issue there? -- and Steve resembles nothing so much as a low level executive, answering to a Regional Manager known as Mr. D. (The D is for Death, not Dionysus, and he should therefore not be confused with the Mr. D from the Percy Jackson series, although plenty of Greek mythology does make an appearance herein.) This is Hereafter, Incorporated, and Steve is a dutiful if somewhat irreverent cog in a very big cosmic wheel.

However, intruding on his simple life is a hostile takeover of the company that causes too many deaths and allows too many “Stirrers” (who are essentially demons that inhabit dead bodies, making for some frighteningly intelligent and resourceful zombies) into our realm, leaving Steve and his new crush, the ghostly and gloriously snarky Lissa, to figure out who is responsible for it all before the entire country is over-run with the living dead.

Steve has to deal with a lot of pain in this book, both emotional and physical, and there is a lot of bodily fluid ickiness, as well. Steve gets violently ill more times than I care to recall and is at one point forced into a little self-love in order to open a particularly stubborn mystical door. Then there’s the blood… so much blood. But somehow, even though this would normally creep me out no end (I’m not much of one for the viscera, and am far less of one for talk of vomit…or, indeed, “varnishing the banister”), in this case it is recounted with such matter-of-fact necessity that it barely registered on my usually squeamish radar.

Urban Fantasy is a wide umbrella under which many a disparate tome can take shelter, and Jamieson’s incipient Death Works series, with its alternate now and its first person narrator and its undeniable romance, is a most welcome addition to a genre that constantly seems to be approaching critical mass and yet can still throw out a delightful surprise every now and then.

The tone of this book is instantly engaging, and Steve is a hero who is both likeable and unlikely. His is a laconic, self-deprecatory voice, and while he may spend a little too much time whining about his ex-girlfriend Robyn, and his rising attraction to former fellow-Pomp Lissa takes up a lot of wordage, it all conspires to make him even more endearing.

The title and cover may have gotten me to pick up this book but it was the story, told well under the guise of its bewildered protagonist, that got me hooked, and I confess to a certain impatience to see what new challenges Steven de Selby, having resolved the current crisis, will be required to face in his next outing, Managing Death, due in January next year.

By which time I’ll probably still have that damned Steve Miller song stuck in my head. What the hell is a “pompatus”, anyway? 

  -- Rachel Hyland