UGH - once again a book whose blurb never tells you that it's the second in a series...  I started reading this one and while I was highly intrigued by the concept and character, just kept feeling like I was missing something - so I turned to other reviews. Yeah, I am missing something - THE FIRST BOOK. This is a sequel. I don't understand why authors/publishers/publicists would not mention that right up front - it is very difficult to jump into a story mid-stream, and it leaves readers (or at least this reader) feeling confused and irritated because we spend the time requesting and reading (or at least starting to read) something that we then realize we aren't understanding/following because there's an entire story that happens before the current book...  

So needless to say, I didn't finish this one. It's a great concept and I'll put the first in series (Necropolis, apparently) on my To Be Read list, but I have too many other review commitments in line ahead of this one to be able to read two books in order to do a review here. If I'd known it was a sequel, I wouldn't have requested it. PLEASE publishers/NetGalley, provide that information BEFORE we request titles - it wastes our time and the publishers' copies to send things to us that we can't properly review...  

(I've given three stars because NetGalley forces a star rating and I don't think it's fair to the author to say I didn't like it when I don't know if I would have if I'd read the first book before starting this one...)

Meet Dyson Devereux. The embodiment of sartorial perfection, a dedicated professional in the Burial and Cemeteries field, a polyglot, a smart and erudite man with impeccable tastes and manners, a devoted father…and also a sociopath and a murderer, because let’s face it, no one’s perfect. Dyson isn’t a serial killer per se (well, in numbers only), he’s really more just along the lines of a guy who tends to get rid of the intolerable elements in his life in a homicidal manner. The difficult thing is to balance his personal and professional lives with his murderous tendencies. That’s also where the dark comedy of it all comes in. Dyson is essentially a British version of the American Psycho in many ways, although, unlike Mr. Bateman, he isn’t meant to be a representation of the soulless consumerism culture or an emblem of a generation. I’ve recently read Portman’s take on dystopia Tomorrow’s World, so had a pretty good idea of what to expect tone wise, although this book is a completely different beast and kudos to the author for diversifying so easily and well. There is the same sort of darkly humorous glibness, but this was undeniably dissimilar in all the right ways and, for me, more enjoyable. Nice work of character driven fiction, even if the driver in this case is fairly unhinged. The way Dyson refers to those around him as an it, that alone is such a terrific stroke of characterization. He doesn’t mean it in some misguided politically correct way of appreciating gender neutrality either, he just doesn’t register them as equals, just a sort of lower forms of being. The ending seemed slightly abrupt. Or maybe that depends on how attached you’ll get to Dyson. But overall it was a very entertaining read and I appreciate the fact that the author once again manages to deliver a fun read within a very reasonable page count. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.