Procession of the Dead
D. B. Shan
312 pages
published in 2008
Never heard of D. B. Shan before I found this in the library, but the book looked interesting and that’s what libraries are for, aren’t they; discovering new authors. Judging from the back cover blurb this seemed to be a crime thriller with some fantastical elements and for once that’s what it turned out to be. It was interesting to for once go into a novel without preconceptions, without knowning anything about the author or the books he has written.
Procession of the Dead is a book about a young gangster called Capac Raimi, coming to the City to be an apprentice to his uncle, one of the small time crooks running part of the underworld. Capac has higher ambitions than that though, hoping to catch the eye of the Cardinal, the man who runs all of the underworld. The Cardinal is the City and the City is the Cardinal: “if the Cardinal pinched the cheeks of his arse, the walls of the city bruised”. And Capac does catch his eye, at the cost of his uncle’s life.