Review by Ian Keogh

Danny is a delivery driver, an adult but still living at home with his parents as he’s had mental health issues, and there are limitations placed on his activities. What he doesn’t need added to his life is being the first to turn up at a house after there’s been a killing. This is in Baltimore, and the other characters thrown into the mix are a tenacious police investigator on the verge of retirement, and a barely seen killer known to the police for wearing crocodile boots.

No matter where you think Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s going to take his plot from there, you’re wrong. We’re given enough information about Danny to feel sympathy for him, but also enough to be wary as we’re not getting the entire story, and then we move into someone else’s story, someone with military history. Danny isn’t the only damaged personality here.

The sample art shows just a little of the weirdness Indian artist Som (Somnath Pal) feeds in. It’s a very good method of showing the levels of unreality experienced by someone who’s haunted and off their meds, and the strangeness increases throughout. Because the initial day to day experiences are so diligently drawn they suck readers into a normal world and when the bomb drops it’s more shocking than a horror story that’s served up a grim world throughout. Distortions become a regular feature, and they’re brilliantly provided by Som.

At heart Crocodile Black is a relatively simple crime story given its thrill via the weirdness and via a big question hanging over everything. That’s never definitively answered, but the hints are there for readers to connect. This is very dark, but compelling to the final page.