Dead City [Mass Market Paperback]

Joe McKinney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 9, 2006

Battered by five cataclysmic hurricanes in three weeks, the Texas Gulf Coast and half of the Lone Star State is reeling from the worst devastation in history. Thousands are dead or dying - but the worst is only beginning. Amid the wreckage, something unimaginable is happening: a deadly virus has broken out, returning the dead to life - with an insatiable hunger for human flesh...Within hours, the plague has spread all over Texas. San Antonio police officer Eddie Hudson finds his city overrun by a voracious army of the living dead. Along with a small group of survivors, Eddie must fight off the savage horde in a race to save his family...There's no place to run. No place to hide. The Zombie horde is growing as the virus runs rampant. Eddie knows he has to find a way to destroy these walking horrors...but he doesn't know the price he will have to pay.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joe McKinney is the author of numerous horror, crime, and science fiction novels, including Quarantined, Dodging Bullets, and the four-part Dead World series, which consists of Dead City, Apocalypse of the Dead, Flesh Eaters, and The Zombie King. He has a master's degree in English literature from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and has worked as a homicide detective and a disaster mitigation specialist for the San Antonio Police Department. Joe lives north of San Antonio with his wife and children. Audiobook veteran and AudioFile Earphones Award winner Michael Kramer has recorded more than two hundred audiobooks for trade publishers and many more for the Library of Congress Talking Books program. His audiobooks include North and South by John Jakes, and a number of other Jakes titles; capers and mysteries by Donald E. Westlake (a.k.a. Richard Stark), including Money for Nothing; and Robert Jordan's fantasy-adventure fiction. In addition, Michael received Audie Award nominations for The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson and Dead Aim by Thomas Perry, and a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award for Savages by Don Winslow.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Pinnacle (November 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786017813
• ISBN-13: 978-0786017812
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (161 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #272,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joe McKinney has been a patrol officer for the San Antonio Police Department, a homicide detective, a disaster mitigation specialist, a patrol commander, and a successful novelist. His books include the four part Dead World series, Quarantined and Dodging Bullets. His short fiction has been collected in The Red Empire and Other Stories and Dating in Dead World and Other Stories. For more information go to http://joemckinney.wordpress.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Day of the Zombies, January 7, 2007

By 

Joshua Koppel (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead City (Mass Market Paperback)

Texas has been hit hard by hurricanes and Houston is under water. North, in San Antonio, the weather has been better and they are taking in refugees. But for one policeman, things are about to become a nightmare. He is forced to terminate an argument with his wife in order to respond to a call in a bad part of town. It seems that there is some sort of street brawl going on. But after responding, the truth begins to come out. What at first looks like a gang fight is revealed to be far deadlier. Some crazy people are attacking everyone they can. They stagger about and seem unstoppable. Bullets don't seem to faze them. Many are seriously wounded but pay it no mind. To make things worse, they seem to want to bite and eat people. For lack of a better explanation, they are described as zombies. A bite from one is deadly. Their numbers seem to increase very rapidly and our hero is the only one to escape this altercation.

Then the real horror begins as he quickly realizes this is not just a local thing. The whole town seems to be overrun with the zombies. The day, and night, becomes a fight for survival and a quest to find his wife and baby. His travels have him run into other survivors, some who continue to survive and some who don't. Intermittent cell phone service lets him know his wife is alive, but not where she is. In this time of crisis, some people band together and help while others are quite the opposite. Just how this story ends is left to the reader to discover but I will say it is not a standard ending but it works very well.

This is an interesting story. Zombies are becoming the rage again in books and this is one of the better offerings. At first it reminded me of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comics but it quickly found a voice of its own. I found it hard to put this one down as I had to know what was going on. We never really find out what caused the zombies. Was it a mutated germ or did something in a bio-lab escape due to the hurricanes? We don't know. We also never find out how the zombies congregate so quickly (although the question is asked many times). But I do know I really enjoyed the book and am looking forward to more from this author. Check it out.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like One of the Best Zombie Movies ,,, In My Head, February 11, 2007

By 

Josh Brooks (Sc, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead City (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read my share of horror novels. It's mainly all that I read. I'm the type of reader that gives what I'm reading cinematic detailing in my head as I read it, and I have never had so much ease and fun while doing this as I had with Dead City.

Joe McKinney captured the true essence of what makes a good zombie tale. You have your usual substance of gore, relentless crowds of zombies, the apocalyptic world, and so on. But what truly made the book was the depth and power McKinney put behind his main character, Eddie Hudson. Eddie was just a regular guy working his late-night shift as a police officer when all hell broke lose in his life. The book tells the story of Eddie as he fights for his life, accompanies many side characters, and struggles to reach his wife and 6 month old son.

What was also interesting is the reasoning that McKinney gave to the dead coming back to life. That being that a recent string of hurricanes randomly exposing a virus to the Gulf Coast. Simple. Also, the characters in the book question the zombie genre themselves. From Eddie's first assumption of the reanimated dead being zombies, him uttering the word "zombie" for the first time, a character in the book being a zombie chatroom discussionist, and other side-notes about the existence of zombies.

One negative note about the book is its ending. It was a little too formulaic for me. Up until the last 3 chapters, McKinney didn't really go against zombie movie formula. He would introduce characters, make you get involved with them, only to have their limbs ripped off a few chapters later. When it came to the end - although what you were rooting for occurs - it becomes just a little too formulaic. But it's not really something I should gripe about when comparing it to the brilliance that is the rest of the book.

Joe McKinney has a great sense of writing and character development, and I really can't wait to see what he terrifies us with next.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you love living dead this is one for you!!!, January 8, 2007

By 

J. Griffin (Granby Mass) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead City (Mass Market Paperback)

I couldnt put it down from the moment I started reading it!!If there was ever a book that should be word for word produced into a movie,then this is it!!I would love to see this on the big screen.From one moment to the next Eddie Hudson who is a police officer finds himself in amazing situations tring to find his wife and child.I have to say this is by far one of the best written Living Dead books I have read in a while.There are no weird mind reading Orbs or freak zombie animals or evil vs good monsters,just good old plain dead coming back to life and that should be enough to scare the heck out of you!!This is one I wont sell as soon as Im finished,this one is going on my shelf right next to I am Legend.