Enjoyable and well written. The ending is a "whiskey tango foxtrot" ending, but OK.

I like Stan Markowski, he's honest and a hard-a**, but growing on me. ( )

Stan Markowski is a detective in the Occult Crimes Investigation Unit in Scranton, PA. Though he doesn't think much of vampires or other paranormal beings, he is gradually coming around now that his partner and daughter are both vampires. His current case centers around the unexplained deaths of a variety of supernaturals including witches and werewolves. The FBI also comes to town with another case: someone is summoning demons and making snuff films and it looks like they are being filmed in Scranton.

As Markowski and his partner investigate they discover that Scranton may be the test site for a future race war pitting humans against supernaturals. There are lots of references to Helter Skelter and Charles Manson. There are defrocked bishops and millionaires with agendas.

This was an interesting combination of genres. It read as a hard-boiled detective story in an alternate present peopled by humans and supernatural beings. Markowski is a smart, competent cop who is eager to get to the bottom of the problem. His partner Karl is a recently-turned vampire and a James Bond fan. His daughter works as a police dispatcher on the night shift, naturally.

Fans of hard-boiled detective stories and urban fantasy will enjoy this series. I'm eager to read about their next case. ( )

An Urban Fantasy novel. The world of the supernatural exists semi-peacefully along side the rest of humanity. The Occult Crimes Unit is there to investigate when things aren't so peaceful. This one, someone is using demons to possess one person and torture another to death for snuff films. and it seems they have larger aims than just killing off a few people and make some money from sickos. Markowski and his partner have a lot riding on their abilities to figure out who is responsible before things get out of hand. ( )

A not bad cop mystery with action and no romance to speak of. The paranormal magical world the author develops incorporates religious viewpoints, though a couple of fundamental Christian characters are shallow stereotypical villains. Other religious characters are seen as integral to the protection of law enforcement officials on the 'paranormal' beat. This is unusual in that many authors seem intent on making Christianity, and religion in general, the requisite ignorant bad guy of the story. Gustainis makes several of his religious leaders integral to the paranormal protection of others. I'm not sure how other Christians will view this, but I for one appreciate the change of tenor in this regard. ( )

Second in the Occult Crime Unit Investigation series, Evil Dark, by Justin Gustainis, continues to draw readers in with an excellent narrator (think Harry Dresden, but give him a badge and a crucifix) in a pleasingly noir world that’s only slightly offset from our own.

The atmosphere is coolly convincing, from crowded precinct to streets and bars, to rooms with locked doors where vampires sleep like the dead. The dialog has pitch perfect humor, pathos and urgency as much-loved friends and family are brought into an ever-expanding danger. The punnish sarcasm zings with lots of great movie and book references (James Bond in From Transylvania with Love, for example). And the church just might change its stance on “supes,” or supernaturals, one day. Meanwhile, the important questions are rather, who’s out to get whom, where does luck come into it, and will the witch save the world or destroy it?

A father protecting his child, a cop chasing bad guys, a hero who really shouldn’t keep going it alone (but daylight’s bad for his partner)... Stan Markowski’s a character I could keep reading about, again and again, and I hope there’ll be many more books on offer in this series. “Jamaican Blue Mountain” coffee beans will never taste the same. “Not all bikers are human racist...” after all. And in the style of all the best noir fiction, Evil Dark is scary, sometimes thought-provoking, suspenseful, gritty and violent, and it’s great fun, set in Scranton, in a slightly, and darkly, altered USA.

Disclosure: I was given a free ecopy and I offer my honest review. I honestly loved it. ( )