Review by Win Wiacek
For purists every literary genre is sacrosanct – unless you can come up with a way to mix or blend them with such style, verve and panache that something new is born feeling like it’s always been one of the gang.
Lurking in the shadows since first released in 2013, Misery City is a dark, bleak and ferociously introspective tale that relates the cases of Max Murray. He’s a dowdy, down-at-heel 1940s private eye stalking the meanest streets imaginable, in a vast and ever-changing metropolis situated on the outskirts of Hell – and, no, that’s not poetic license or flowery prose, it’s a satnav instruction.
This pocket sized package is a stark, unrelenting procession of grimly trenchant case-files starring a shabby, unshockable shamus just trying to get by uncovering other people’s secrets whilst making some sense of the most pitiless town in creation. Of course, Max has a few secrets of his own…
The black parade begins on the ‘Night of the Corpse’ when the world-weary peeper is attacked by a giant skeleton and must employ his beloved and handy handgun Fat Betty to end the undead animate. Times are both tough and weird, so he doesn’t give it much thought before retiring to his dingy office to await a new client and case. When the phone rings it’s that sexy waitress Pakita from The Bar. Max has suffered the serious hots for the hot totty simply forever, but his rising hopes take a dive when the mercurial Mexican only hires him to check up on her cheating boyfriend.
As a host of demonic clowns hunt the private detective, Max finds Pakita’s man. However, catching the faithless dog with another woman drives the PI crazy, and Murray goes ballistic, beating the cheating Dick to a pulp.
Despite his shoddy appearance, this detective is no dumb palooka. His secret vice is reading, and Max’s unceasing internal monologue is peppered with quotes and allusions from poets like Dante and Tennyson. They’re the only thing comforting him as ‘A Wooden Coffin for Max Murray part I’ sees him taking the Hell train to a surveillance job in the worst part of Misery City.
He agrees to check out the abandoned timber-framed family house a tearful widow fears property developers crave. Maybe he should be more suspicious, but the client’s stunning daughter Josephine turns his head and all points south.
He’s lost in space and out of options despite a few of his own incredible survival secrets in ‘A Wooden Coffin for Max Murray part II’. It appears Max is on a first name basis with the Big Boss of the Inferno, and the head man is keen on renewing a satanic acquaintance with the understandably reluctant detective.
These malign mystery yarns conclude with a stunning surprise in ‘The Last Drag of a Pocket God’ with Max dogging a phantom with astounding delusions of grandeur. However, the shamus is forced to confront his own long-suppressed thoughts: examining the illusions that keep him going on the pitiless streets of Misery City.
Potently targeted vulgarity and a brusque, verbally confrontational narrative style gives Kostas Zachopoulos’ manic scripts a supremely savage edge, whilst the freakish, surreal horror-noir milieu is perfectly captured by the astoundingly frenetic art of collaborator/illustrator Vassilis Gogtzilas. It’s delivered in a melange of assorted styles.
This mean, moody and menacing chronicle is topped off with a host of powerful pin-ups and a cover art gallery to further disquiet and beguile the unwary reader.
