Department Zero

November 21, 2016
Crilley (The Osiris Curse) smashes together multiverse theory and the Cthulhu mythos in this action-packed, shallow horror fantasy. Harry Priest is middle-aged and stuck in a disgusting job: crime-scene cleanup. After a gig goes sideways, Priest finds himself enmeshed in a harrowing fight for his world, and other worlds. Priest has seen too much, so Havelock Graves recruits him for the Interstitial Crime Department, which deals with crime on a cosmic scale, using portals to jump from one world to the next. He explains to Priest that Lovecraft’s creations aren’t fiction, and Priest and Graves must fight Cthulhu’s acolytes and a host of other baddies (including a snarky Nyarlathotep) to save humanity. The narrative is fast-paced and fun, and the set pieces are well imagined, but the characters are never fully realized. However, the humor is on point, and Priest is an affable ne’er-do-well who only wants to see his young daughter grow up. His delight at the wonder of multiple worlds offers a nice contrast to Graves’s wry, world-weary affect. Lovecraft fans might have a lot of fun with this one, but those looking for deeper engagement will need to look elsewhere.

December 1, 2016

Crime scene cleanup isn't glamorous, but it's a regular paycheck for Harry Priest. When he and his boss's obnoxious son, Jorge, get called to a hotel to clean after a spectacularly grisly incident, their work is intercepted by agents from the Interstitial Crime Division (ICD), who claim jurisdiction over the area. If only Jorge hadn't tampered with evidence at the scene. The creatures that come to retrieve the stolen items are eldritch horrors from another dimension. Soon Harry is working for the ICD, trying to prevent Lovecraftian Old Ones from destroying the universe. While Harry is a sympathetic protagonist, the other characters don't really jell. The team that Harry begins with in the ICD rapidly falls by the wayside, leaving only the character of Graves, whose personality seems to change from chapter to chapter. VERDICT After a promising start, this occult adventure from the author of Poison City and Daredevil rapidly gets frustratingly messy.--MM

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2016
Harry Priest's life is not going very well at all. He is newly divorced with limited access to his daughter, and he hates working at a firm that specializes in cleaning up crime scenes. That is, until a unique assignment has strange consequences for his life when he discovers a door into an alternative reality. Priest is then quickly recruited to work at Department Zero, where they handle paranormal, cross-reality crime clean-up. Department Zero is part of a larger organization, ICD, that is responsible for maintaining the divisions between different realities. The alternative realities in this book range from a Tolkien-like world to a world like Earth, where huge historical events had a different outcome, to a world where someone's trying to raise Cthulhu. Priest is lighthearted and funny in his approach to the strange situation he is in, making him the perfect character with whom readers experience these worlds. The narrative style is reminiscent of David Wong's John Dies at the End (2007), and fans of Lovecraft will enjoy that world's reliance on his works.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)