Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. In this case, the cover is good, and the book is very, very, good.

I started this for what should have been a fifteen minute break. Two hours later I put it down, wondering where the evening had gone. I’m not going to talk about the formatting or grammar, since the story got me so hooked I neither noticed nor cared. The characters are realistic and well-written, the story gripping and the plot that rarest of things – original!

On the surface this seems like a standard zombie apocalypse story: a virus infects the majority of the population turning them into cannibalistic mindless zombies. It takes it a step further: once a cure is found and used, what happens next? The story is told from the point of view of a former debt-collector and now-cured zombie, through infection, madness and then the new world afterwards. PTSD, criminal trials, tension between the infected and immune and more all ratchet up the tension nicely. This isn’t an outright gore-fest: most of the horror is psychological and the more disturbing because of it.

I’ve actually recommended this to another reviewer. It’s that good.

Lovers of horror, thrillers, post-apocalyptic fiction, and – of course – zombies, should read this now.