Finch
Jeff Vandermeer
Underland Press, Nov 2009, $14.95, www.underlandpress.com, ISBN: 9780980226010
reviewed by Harriet Klausner

Ambergris was once a great city, but now is in decline festering with fungus decay under brutal marital law. The fear that grips the human residents is caused by the ruthless gray caps who have ruled over the metropolis for six brutal years; ever since the Rising took this underclass from their underground subsistence and placed them in charge.

The gray caps use unnecessary violent acts that include rendition camps and enforced drugging. In this cesspool atmosphere, Police detective John Finch works cases assigned to him. He receives his assignments from an almost impossible to comprehend creature who communicates with clicking guttural sounds and what he assumes is alien whistling. Although he never fully understands what the boss directs, Finch like all human cops at the station knows to obey or else. A double murder of a gray cap and a human stuns everyone especially the clicker in charge. Finch knows something about the homicides for the first time has shaken his superior. He and his partner Wyte investigate with his grey cap boss watching every move they make as the clues lead to the Lady in Blue and her counter fungus rebellion.

About one hundred years has passed since SHRIEK and company discovered the lowlife grey caps and the CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN which has turned upside down literally in the latest Ambergris science fiction thriller. The once great city has become a grim forlorn place to live and work. Finch is terific as he holds the dark police procedural story line together while working the homicide investigation and learning so much more that he would prefer not to know. Still in spite of the hero’s despondent revelations about his place in the food chain which is just above the ooze, the dark and hopeless city owns Jeff Vandermeer’s grim saga.