Resnick, Mike

Stalking the Zombie: Fables of Tonight

ISBN: 0961035250
Woodstock, IL: American Fantasy, 2012. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. "It was back in the mid-1980s that I decided, after all my science fiction novels, it was time to write a fantasy novel." (first sentence, Introduction, pg. xiii). Stalking the Zombie: Fables of Tonight is a collection of short mystery fiction by American Science Fiction writer & editor Mike Resnick (1949-2020) built around his recurring detective John Justin Mallory. It gathers eight stories written across roughly 1991–2008, plus the title story, which was original to this volume. The book also opens with a new introduction by Resnick explaining where the character came from. The appeal of Stalking the Zombie rests on genre collision. Resnick takes the conventions of Chandler-and-Hammett detective noir, the cynical narration, the femme fatales, the seedy clientele, the procedural beats of a case, and drops them into an urban-fantasy setting, mining the contrast for comedy. The humor comes precisely from Mallory treating preposterous supernatural problems with the flat, methodical seriousness of a working PI. The Mallory character is the anchor of a small franchise, having debuted in the novel Stalking the Unicorn in 1987 and continued in Stalking the Vampire & Stalking the Dragon. Stalking the Zombie is the short-fiction companion to those novels, pulling the character into bite-sized cases rather than book-length mysteries. In the 1960s & early 1970s, Resnick wrote over 200 erotic adult novels under various pseudonyms and edited three men's magazines & seven tabloid newspapers. For over a decade he wrote a weekly column about horse racing and a monthly column about purebred collies, which he and his wife bred and showed. He won five Hugo awards and a Nebula award. Hardcover in unclipped Dust Jacket: First Trade Edition per copyright page, first printing as explicated by number sequence thereon. A most collectible Detective/Fantasy Resnick Mashup in its rarest contemporary form. Book in relatively very fine condition with very minor wear at bottom of spine near back cover; no discernible flaws to text block or interior. Dust Jacket very fine with very few occasions of minor bumping to fine edges of front, back covers, spine & flaps, essentially mint. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #9060]

Price: $50.00