The Last Weekend: A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools by Nick Mamatas
Night Shade Books (January 2016)
252 pages; $33 hardcover; $12.22 paperback; $9,99 e-book
Reviewed by Frank Michaels Errington
Despite having the word “Zombies” in the title, this novel is far from your typical zombie fare. If you’re looking for a brain munching gore-fest, you may want to look elsewhere.
On the other hand, if you’re familiar with the Billy Wilder directed film-noir, The Lost Weekend, based on Charles R. Jackson’s 1944 novel of the same name about an alcoholic writer, then you’re in for a real treat.
It is within this context that The Last Weekend: A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools is a great success.
In post apocalyptic San Francisco, Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolos, failed writer and accomplished barfly, finds work as a “driller” for the city. It’s his job to respond to calls to find the newly dead and destroy their brain before they can reanimate. There’s a great line in his interview for the job where one of the interviewers asks his current occupation. When Billy responds with writer, the second interviewer tells the first to put down “unemployed.”
Mamatas fills this story with interesting characters, top to bottom; even incidental characters, like a typewriter salesman, are fully fleshed out.
The Last Weekend: A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools is a solid literary work on the life of a “writer” after the onset of the zombie apocalypse.
First published in March of 2014 by PS Publishing, The Last Weekend: A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools is now available in hardback, paperback, and e-book formats from Night Shade Books.
Recommended.
