Monday and the Murdered Man

They say all the best cases start when a gorgeous but troubled lady walks into your office.  Most of my cases begin when an ugly old guy asks me to follow his young and beautiful wife.  Believe me when I tell you that the client never enjoys paying that particular bill.  Either the wife was cheating and now the guy blames me, or she wasn’t cheating and now he doesn’t want to pay me.  So where was I? Oh, that's right; the best cases begin when a gorgeous but troubled lady walks into your office.  This case wasn't going to be like that.

This case began when a dead man walked into my office.  And not one of those elegant Eurotrash vampires, either.  This guy was a corpse.  He looked like a corpse, he smelled like a corpse, and he talked like I imagined corpses must talk.

I wasn't totally surprised.  I had heard about revenants, of course.  Nearly everyone in my business has.  Revenants are the animated dead, risen from the grave to seek justice or revenge.  Usually revenge.  Hard working private detectives like myself ran into them from time to time.  Not as often as homicide cops did, but often enough.  And as far as I was concerned, once was too often for me.

"Mr. Monday, I need you to find my murderer," the murdered man groaned, moistly.

I never knew somebody could groan moistly.  Now I did.  Lucky me.  The murdered man was well-dressed, I'd give him that much.  He was wearing a sharply-tailored black pinstripe suit. His red silk tie and matching pocket square were both picture-perfect. His shoes looked expensive; they were probably Italian leather. The ensemble was - well, ‘flattering’ couldn't be the right word, but he wore it well.  ‘Well’ for a corpse, that is. I often size a client up by his wardrobe, but in this case not looking at his face was a bonus. The revenant’s face was swollen and rotting, and when he wasn’t speaking it had an alarming tendency to relax into a rictus that could charitably be described as hideous.  

And so it begins for Zack Monday. When a dead man walks into his office looking to solve the mystery of his own murder, the private detective must confront thugs, corrupt cops, ghosts, undead mobsters, devils, angels and his ex-wife to find the hard truths that no one wants found.  But Zack isn't alone. He'll get help from his partner Baxter – a half-goblin bruiser with a secret past, and a slacker street-warlock named Tim whose involvement in the case is a bit of a mystery in and of itself.

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