Customer Reviews

Alive in Necropolis

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Let me just begin with an exceprt of the publisher's description of the book, as I don't think I can describe the premise of "Alive in Necropolis" nearly as well as they do:

"Colma, California, is the only incorporated city in America where the dead outnumber the living. The longtime cemetery for San Francisco, it is the resting place of the likes of joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and aviation pioneer Lincoln Beachey. It is also the home of Michael Mercer, a rookie cop trying to go by the book as he struggles to navigate a new realm of grown-up relationships..."

But instead of settling comfortably into adult life, Mercer becomes obsessed with the mysterious fate of his predecessor in the police unit, Sergeant featherstone, who seems to have become confused about whether he was policing the living or the dead...

This is not a typical description of the books I read. It sounds like an odd cross of mystery and fantasy. I read almost nothing in the mystery genre and not much in the fantasy genre, and there mainly in young adult fantasy. However, I figured that this was a review copy and I might as well give it a chance, branch out a bit.

I am extremely glad that I decided to be openminded about this book! Surprisingly, the whole `policing the dead' aspect turned out to be less prevalent than expected. "Alive in Necropolis" was more about relationships, about being `alive' in this city most notable for graveyards. I was quite impressed with Dorst's skill, particularly as this is his first novel. I figured that the book would feature some ridiculously inventive plot that would excuse a lack of substantial writing. This wasn't remotely true. Yes, there was a fantastic aspect to the plot, but this book was primarily made by the writing. Dorst gave his main character(s) in particular a good deal of depth and was able to show the reader this depth through the actions and reactions of the characters.

I would recommend this book for those who love good, solid, well-written fiction, fantasy fans or not.

Colma, CA has 1200 living residents and 2 million residents already dead. "No one knows for sure what (the dead) do - if they do anything but lie mute, immobile, decaying - but some of the living have their suspicions."
So starts the story of Officer Michael Mercer, Colma Badge 13. Mercer feels that his life is heading in the right direction - a new job, a new girlfriend, and now hailed a local hero for saving the life of the teenaged son (Jude) of a famous film director. However, Colma's dead have also taken an interest in Mercer because, unlike most of Colma's other residents, he is able to both see and hear them.
After Mercer receives 4 boxes of questionable incident reports from the widow of Officer Featherstone, the man he replaced on the Colma police force, he begins to recognize his unusual link with the dead and realize this "communication" was something he had in common with Featherstone.
Mercer soon finds himself saddled not only with Jude's case to solve, but also the pursuit of "Doc" Barker and his gang of ghostly thugs who are harassing the deceased population of Colma. The real question is, if Mercer will be able to actually defeat "Doc" Barker or if he will suffer the same fate as his predecessor, Featherstone.
On the whole, Alive in Necropolis is a wonderfully entertaining read. The author does a fantastic job of bringing all of his characters fully to life - even when they're dead.

I bought this book randomly and I'm really glad that I did. While the cover is kind of cheesy, the prose inside is anything but.

Although it does involve ghosts, I've never read something so real before. The relationships between the characters aren't exaggerated like you find in so many books. There are real issues and feelings involved. I think the confusion the main character has over whether he was in love or not is a universal problem and I have never seen it explored in this way.

Beautiful book.

I'm not sure what to say about this book. The writing is solid: subdued and keeps a good pace. You'll never find yourself wishing things were going faster, because you're never really sure where you're headed. To a confrontation with Doc Barker's gang? Reverend Whipple? Fiona? You're never sure.

Mercer is a great character, constantly trying to improve himself and facing serious choices about his development as a man and a police officer. Dorst did an okay job telling me why Mercer liked Fiona, but I never really got the romantic connection. I was really pulling for him to get with Kelly and have a little fun, for the first time in his life.

Encapsulating the action into the police reports is an interesting implementation of fiction. Dorst certainly gets points for trying something new. I can't figure out what I really like about this book, but I can tell you what I don't.

1. The present tense is very distracting at times. I don't understand why authors choose to write in this fashion when so little is gained. I guess it's a good decision when you're writing lyrical narrative, with lots of action and a fast pace. But if you're describing architecture, the present tense is ridiculous: "Is someone creating the corinthian columns right now? I can't tell!"

2. Officer Mercer is rather injury-prone. I could see one incident, specifically the car crash, happening and advancing the plot. But he's in the hospital on three separate occasions, and after the third occurrence you really don't care that he's in pain.

3. So many characters! Most are interesting, with Toronto and Jude probably being the most in-depth, but their roles come in waves, and are never complete. Some characters, particularly Lorna, get off scott-free from their poor choices, while others, particularly Jude, are placed in impossible situations and face huge consequences. Reyna doesn't even make an appearance in the epilogue: what the Hell happened to her?

4. We are never really emotionally invested in the plight of the ghosts. Dorst never connects what Featherstone was doing there in the first place (I assumed he actually was crazy) and, more importantly, never gives us a real reason for Mercer to care what happened to the beleaguered residents of the cemetary.

5. Little Coit learns martial arts from an old guy in the Japanese cemetary? Seriously?

6. Using root on the living in the climax seems curious. Doc Barker already has a great method of killing, see Sergeant Featherstone. Further, we are never told about the method used by the latter to avoid coming to the cemetary at all. It is mentioned in passing in one of the police reports (cremation, I think?) but it would have been interesting to examine how he learned of the circumstances and any other "rules" that apply to the lives of the dead.

Overall, I guess I can't recommend this book, per se, but if you're thinking about reading it, I think you should, simply to see what you'll think.

Michael Mercer sees dead people. But that's not why he's a morose, tongue-tied, socially-challenged young man--he's just that way. Now that I think of it, maybe it's the other way around: his undeveloped personal skills are the reason he can converse with ghosts.

Regardless, Mercer is the perfect cop to patrol Colma, California, the only city in America where the dead outnumber the living. As he goes about his rounds of the city's many cemeteries, he sees things other cops don't. Like a long-dead pyromaniac heiress with a heart of gold and a barnstorming aviator who crashes and dies with great regularity, only to crawl from the wreckage and rebuild his plane to fly again, apparently into eternity. As if those encounters aren't weird enough, Mercer also goes to war with the dead, notably a criminal mastermind who awakens (or whatever the dead do) every morning to slice off his fingerprints and loot and pillage both the spirit and the real world.

Alive in Necropolis is a fun book where two worlds exist side by side. Doug Dorst does a wonderful job of making them both come alive.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo

Alive in Necropolis
Doug Dorst 2008

The mystery and science fiction or fantasy genres have been blended before, for instance in Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" and Glen Cook's "Sweet Silver Blues." (I am sure there are others, but this is the first specifically "ghost story / police procedural" I can recall.) As such, it should appeal to mystery and fantasy fans, but I hope it achieves far wider popularity. As with so many of the best young writers, Dorst feels free to assume the tropes of genre fiction, yet not be bound by its conventions.

At more than 400 closely packed pages, this is not a quick read, but it is endlessly engrossing. With two nearly separate worlds (the living and the dead), numerous well realized characters (not just spear carriers), and a variety of plot threads it could get confusing, but doesn't, and hangs together beautifully. At each moment, I found myself both caring deeply about each character's internal world and what was happening at that point, yet eager to see where the author was leading me in the overall story. (Well, perhaps not so much while reading the Colma Police Department reports carefully reproduced here. A little too much Ed McBain here, maybe. ;-)

Having largely grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I particularly appreciate his spot-on descriptions of the geography, the roads and natural landscape. The setting is Colma, a small community south of San Francisco, consisting largely of cemeteries -- as he puts it, twelve hundred living residents and two million dead ones. Fittingly, it also seems to be a center of some 'other world', ghosts of those recently and not so recently deceased, who form their own society only dimly intersecting with our own. The dead are stuck in the form (even horribly mutilated) they died, yet are virtually indestructible, quickly regenerating from any post-mortem injuries -- except that they can pass to a final rest by eating something called Root, dug from the ground. (Just what Root is is never fully spelled out, nor are many of the rules governing the dead; as in real ...er, life .. they are just there.) Some reviewers have said that the book almost doesn't need its major conceit, the dead, but not only would it be missing 'something', but our main character (rookie cop Mike Mercer) becomes involved in, obsessed with, their peculiar crime problems.

But in spite of the nearly constant presence of the Dead -- in the background, at the edges of our vision, in narrative forays to their world, or intrusive on ours -- the main focus is the living characters: Mercer; his fellow officers, in particular Toronto who is going through life changes of his own; his romantic interests; his group of buddies from his youth; the boy he rescues in the opening act and his family and cohort. And each character, or at least the major ones, evolves, often drastically, during the course of the book.

I started to summarize the plot or character details, and found it virtually impossible within the limits of a review. Even if I could it would not give the true flavor of the book, because despite it's complexity it doesn't feel complex while reading. The various plotlines hang together well, the resolution is satisfying, and the characters are immensely real and interesting. The writing is superb, and I will definitely be looking forward to Dorst's next book. Highly, enthusiastically, recommended.

This novel about a somewhat bumbling police officer in Colma, city of the dead, is a brilliant blend of humor, noir darkness, and the fantastical. Dorst handles all with a subtle, humane touch. Keeps you laughing, and turning the pages.

Dorst is a real talent, someone who makes you think differently about the world around you. I suspect this is a writer we'll be hearing a lot from in the future, and I'll be glad to get my hands on his next offering.

I genuinely loved the characters in this book that takes place in Colma, California, a city where the dead outnumber the living, since it is a small community that houses the cemetaries for nearby larger communities. And in this book, the dead observe and interact with the living locals, for both good and ill.

In many ways, you could call this a Coming of Age book -- except that the person coming of age is already around 30 years old. Officer Michael Mercer hasn't found his place as he has stepped tentatively and nervously through life. As a newly minted police officer, it looks like he has finally discovered something he loves. The rest of his life, however, is still fraught with indecision and a nervous inability to commit.

The story flows from a rescue the officer performs in the first few pages of the book: we see his impact on the lives of other people, and their impact on his life. And I'm talking about both living and dead people.

I found this book very sweet, but also rather sad in a number of places (perhaps just like real life). I might have wished for a slightly different end, but it was still satisfying. I recommend this book without hesitation.

Alive in Necropolis has the compulsive page-turning wallop of Harlan Coben or Robert Harris, and the nostalgic pleasures of a fine San Francisco history; it's got ghosts, and all sorts of very cool and ingeniously imagined supernatural wrinkles to do with them, like ghost-killing, and even ghost-policing. It has villains and heroes, sordid drug dens and doomed love affairs, booze-soaked fiascos and hair's-breadth escapes. And it's sad, and touching, and very, very funny. The dialogue in particular is superfine. I imagine that Dorst's wise-cracking cops will make an absolutely rawkin' movie. (I had already cast Adrien Grenier as Mike Mercer, our hero, before I reached the end.)

Mercer is a cop with issues, working in the necropolis of Colma, California--which is a real place, a tiny town made up largely of cemeteries. In Doug Dorst's Colma, however, there is justice to be done among the dead as well as the living. The novel threads between the future and the past, love and loneliness, the crimes of ghosts and of living men and women. Mike Mercer's story is told against this effortlessly-wrought, pleasurably strange and complex background, and Dorst elevates him onto that rare, high plane of the novelist's art where we come as we read to believe that Mercer is a real person, someone we know; someone we'd like to scold, to argue with, to embrace and comfort.

Indeed, Dorst grants his all weird cast of characters--the washed-up and wasted, the 19th-c. criminals, the stoners and thieves and homeless guys lost on the streets--a rare and wonderful compassion. His kindness and keen perception flow over all equally, like a benediction. That's what really makes the book such an enjoyable read: the author is a boon companion, witty but never self-regarding, clever without the slightest pretension. The NYT called this book "big-hearted" and I can't do better than agree with them, except to add that it is also one of those rare policiers that succeeds in communicating a deeper purpose.

To illustrate this point: one of the main messages of A. in N. is that a man should "die like an aviator," to wit, having flown; having taken the risk of flying, of having lived. Dorst delivers this simple, valuable message quite unabashedly, playfully even, in multiple layers of the story. I mean, here is a very obvious point that most adults tend to forget, or to find too obvious, or something, but it's also something we desperately need to be reminded of. I just loved that, that such an exciting, thriller-paced ghost story should also be so innocently serious and just *good*, you know--it really sent me. Highly, highly recommended.

Alive in Necropolis is a decent enough book. Those who said it followed in the footsteps of Buffy the Vampire Slayer obviously only read the back cover- it was mostly a drama about a guy figuring out who he is, with a minute bit of fantasy worked in. I kept reading, hoping the book would get better and be more of the sci-fi/fantasy novel promised but it did not. In fact, the fantasy/ghost part of the book is wrapped up in just a few pages, which was disappointing after a fairly decent build-up.
If you're a Buffy fan and looking for a good fantasy/horror book, this is not the one.