Kill the Dead (2010) (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• James Stark: aka Sandman Slim; main character, a bounty hunter.
• Lucifer: aka Mr. Macheath; the Prince of Darkness.
• Allegra: she is Stark's friend and Vidocq's apprentice.
• Eugene Vidocq: an immortal alchemist, Stark's friend.
• Mr. Muninn: A salesmen in the extremely rare and unique items.
• Kinski: A doctor to the supernatural. We learned that he is actually Uriel, a fallen Archangel.
• Brigitte Bardo: very sexy, very hot French porn star, friend of Lucifer’s.
• Mason Faim: Stark sent him to Hell.
• Aelita: An angel.
• Carlos: the bartender from the Bamboo house.
• Larson Wells: an U.S. Marshall; he also works for Aelita.
• Candy: Kinski's assistant; a Jade.
• Kasabian: Lucifer uses him to send messages to Stark.
• Simon Ritchie: a movie director; a friend of Lucifer's.
• Alice: she was Stark's girlfriend before he was thrown in Hell.
• Cabal Ash: a Sub Rosa.
• Medea Bava: the Sub Rosa's Inquisitor,
• Johnny Thunders: the Savant stationed in Los Angeles.
• Julia Sola: Marshal Julie works for the Golden Vigil.
• Rainier Geistwald: Koralin's son.
• Koralin Geistwald: she is a woman that wants power.
• Aki: Add a description of this character.

Quotes edit see section history

• “There are lots of theories about fighting and warfare, from Sun Tzu's Art of War to Der Fuhrer's Total War to when you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way.”

• “I get Brigitte to hold the wheel while I tap out a cigarette, light up, and take a bug puff. Instantly, I'm Doc Holliday, trying to cough up a lung." God. They're menthols.”

  Stark (Sandman Slim)

• “Personally, I don't have anything against shroud eaters. They're just another kind of addict in a city of addicts. Since most of them started out as civilians, the percentage of decent vampires to complete bastards is about the same as regular people. Right now, though, I'm hunting one that's trying for a Nobel Prize in getting completely up my ass. It isn't fun work, but it pays the bills.”

  Stark

• “What I like best about old bloodsuckers is that when you've got one cornered and it knows it's con fodder, they're like noble cancer patients in TV movies. All they want is to die quietly and with a little dignity. Young vampires, not so much. The young ones have all grown up watching Slayer videos, Scarface, Halloween, and about a million hours of Japanese anime. They all think they're Tony Montana with a light-saber in one hand and a chain saw in the other.”

  Stark

• “There's only one place a smart girl would go. God said, "Let there be Light, and cheap take-out Chinese," and the Grand Central Market appeared. The place has been on South Broadway since before the continents divided. Some of the meat they use in the burritos and Szechuan beef is even older. I think I once saw Fred Flintstone's teeth `marks on some barbecued ribs.”

  Stark

• “Lucifer always had a way with words. He's just like Bob Dylan, but without all the annoying talent." "That's hilarious. He loves it when you say stuff like that. Every time you do, he turns up the temperature Downtown ten degrees.”

  Strak & Kasabian

• “Damn. What a childish little prick I am. There they are, working to save my ass, and all I can do is whine about poor, poor pitiful me. I need to go kill something real, not snuff dead cheerleaders, but something alive and nasty, something that deserves it.”

  Stark

• “It's ironic, isn't it? You spent all those years in Hell fighting to stay alive, becoming injured and earning your scars. Then you come back home in hopes of destroying both your enemies and yourself, but instead you find yourself healing and becoming your old self again." "Fuck my old self. My old self got his life stolen by morons and the person he cared about most killed. If I start turning into that asshole again, I'll peel these scars off myself and put a shotgun to my forehead.”

  Vidocq & Stark

• “And that's why I like you, Jimmy. We're alike in so many ways. Plus, you're so very good at making things dead. That's what you're going to do for me while I'm here. Not kill so much as prevent a killing, namely mine. You're going to be my bodyguard whenever I'm out in public. " "You're the devil. You gave God a rusty trombone and lived to talk about it. Why would you need a bodyguard?”

  Lucifer & Stark

• “Right. Considering that most Sub Rosa probably consider me a Lurker, do you really want me around so one of them can say something cute at a party and I have to pry his head off with a shrimp fork?" "Do you think for one second that I would allow any of the walking excrement that infests this world to insult me or anyone in my employ? You might be a natural-born killer, but I specialize in torment that lasts a million years. You think you've seen horrors because you were in the arena. Trust me, you have no idea what real horror looks like or the terrible things I've done to keep my throne. You'll be by my side while I'm in Los Angeles because in this task and in all others, I'm as much your bodyguard as you are mine.”

  Stark & Lucifer

• “It's moments like this, when Lucifer gets rolling and the words and the intensity start flowing, that I understand how one lone angel convinced a third of Heaven's worker bees to turn the dump over. And that was just the third with the cojones to follow him. I have a feeling that a lot of other angels listened, but were too scared to join the party. If I was some lower-class grease-monkey angel caught in the cross fire of an argument between Lucifer and Aelita--oh wait, I am--I'd probably think twice about giving God the finger and running off to never-never land with Satan and the Lost Boys. But I'd still go.”

  Stark

• “Hollywood beauty can make your IQ drop, but there's that other kind that's like the end of the world. Armageddon gorgeosity. She walks in the room like the Angel of Death in a miniskirt and all you can think is, If I got shot in the head right now, I'd die smiling.”

  Stark

• “When you make a threat, make it big. When you make it big, make sure you're prepared to go all in if someone calls you on it.”

  Stark

• “What the Hell is in Tartarus? Even the Codex doesn't say." "I don't know, but I figure anything that scares Hellions ought to scare me.”

  Kasabian & Stark

• “Enemies kill you with a knife in the back. Friends kill you with kindness. Either way you're dead. I didn't need to stomp out on Allegra like that, but I couldn't just stand there after she opened her mouth. There are things you think and things you say out loud and they're very different things. You'd think someone like her, six months into hoodoo lessons, would know that. You don't ever say "The devil is your daddy" out loud. It doesn't matter if you and everyone else in the room are thinking it. You don't say the words. Words are weapons. They blast big bloody holes in the world. And words are bricks. Say something out loud and it starts turning solid. Say it out loud enough and it becomes a wall you can't get through. The last thing I need is a big brick Lucifer in my way.”

  Stark

• “Let me make sure I have this straight. The cavalry just now rode into town and it's a Czech Gypsy porn-star zombie killer. Have I got that right?" "Forgive me. I didn't think my life would seem so strange to Lucifer's alcoholic cowboy assassin.”

  Stark & Brigitte

• “What the fuck are you two talking about? Why are all dreams and prophecies so goddamn obscure?" "Because, dumb-ass, if any one of them flat-out told you what was coming, you'd try to stop it or change it. Some things you can't stop. You just have to go through them. At least with a clue, you'll be able to recognize it when it gets there.”

  Stark & Alice

• “But as I said, it's always your choice. That's one rule I've never broken. In your old stories, I'm always tricking or cheating you people, but that's something I refuse to do. Cheating you would be an admission of weakness. I would never give Father the satisfaction.”

  Lucifer

• “I'm a paid consultant to this organization who took a shortcut inside. Mea culpa. Get Wells down here and he can put a nasty note in my personnel file." "You don't have a personnel file because you're not a person. You're an entity. Not the same thing as a person by a long shot.”

  Stark & Wells

• “What makes you think Brigitte's going to dump me?" "Gee, I don't know. She dates billionaires and you live in an attic over a video store. She wants to get into big-time movies and you can get her free beer and tacos. You're a monster and she's a person. I can e-mail you a spreadsheet if you want to see the other five hundred reasons.”

  Stark & Kasabian

• “I lied to Kasabian. I can feel myself dying inside, but just the Stark part. He flickers in and out of focus, like a strobe light losing power. The intervals of darkness get longer and longer. Soon the flashes will stop and Stark will be gone. Rest in peace, asshole. Maybe someone will miss you, but it won't be me.”

  Stark

• “The moment the thought crystallizes, Aelita wins. The solar winds and deadly vacuum freezing the empty space between the stars blows the last of Stark away. He falls into the dark. He doesn't make a sound. He's not surprised. He saw this moment coming. He fixes his eyes on me as he falls. That's the last I see of him, the light reflected in his eyes as they go from white orbs to pinpoints to nothing. Then he's gone and I'm alone. Only the angel left in here. No humans allowed.”

  Stark

• “James isn't here. It's just me now." "I was wondering when this was going to happen. Nephilim are so unstable. Now it's time for you to have a little psychotic break and imagine you're a true angel. How sweet. Sad, but sweet.”

  Strak & Lucifer

• “The king is the land. The land is the king. The dying king is the death of the land. It's an old story.”

  Lucifer

• “"You were a prick and a crook, but no one deserves to go out the way you went. I hope it was over quick and that you tasted like ass all the way down. Amen."”

  Stark

• “"Memories are bullets. Some whizz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces. Someday the right one will catch you right between the eyes and you’ll never see it coming. There’ll just be a flash of a face or a smell or her touch. And bang, you’re gone. The only rational thing to do is kill memory. Get it before it gets you. One more drink should do it. It hasn’t worked before, but what the hell, maybe this time it will. I finish the Aqua Regia."”

  Stark

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• It’s like a dog with cancer ate a rat with leprosy and shit it down my throat.”

  Highlighted by 52 Kindle customers

• Vices shouldn’t be safe. They’re what remind us we’re alive and mortal.”

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• once whiskey’s been let loose you have to deal with it, like love or a rabid dog.

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• Words are weapons. They blast big bloody holes in the world. And words are bricks. Say something out loud and it starts turning solid. Say it out loud enough and it becomes a wall you can’t get through.

  Highlighted by 37 Kindle customers

• The universe is a meat grinder and we’re just pork in designer shoes, keeping busy so we can pretend we’re not all headed for the sausage factory. Maybe I’ve been hallucinating this whole time and there is no Heaven and Hell. Instead of having to choose between God and the devil, maybe our only real choice comes down to link or patty?

  Highlighted by 33 Kindle customers

• “Let me make sure I have this straight. The cavalry just now rode into town and it’s a Czech Gypsy porn-star zombie killer. Have I got that right?”

  Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers

• There’s a difference between a bad death and the universe stopping by to take a great big shit on you.

  Highlighted by 31 Kindle customers

• I think the guy took out his spinal fluid and replaced it with tequila. He’s epically, gorgeously drunk. If his drunkenness had legs, it would be Alexander the Great and conquer the known world. Then it would puke for a week into a solid gold toilet it stole from Zeus’s guest room.

  Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers

• “Quid salvum est si Roma perit?” What is safe if Rome perishes?

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• IMAGINE SHOVING A cattle prod up a rhino’s ass, shouting “April fool!”, and hoping the rhino thinks it’s funny. That’s about how much fun it is hunting a vampire.

  Highlighted by 27 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Bamboo House of Dolls: a bar where Stark likes to go.
• Los Angeles: the town where Stark lives.
• Chateau Marmont: a giant white castle on a green hill.

Organizations edit see section history

• Golden Vigil: Heaven's Pinkertons. a society of angels that work to protect humanity; they also use humans as their help.
• Max Overload: a video store.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Sub Rosa: humans that have magical powers.
• Lurker: any secretive, mystical, or monstrous creature that isn't a Sub Rosa. Like naiads, zombies, werewolves.
• Jade: you can compare them with a cross between a vampire and tarantula. They're bite paralyzes humans.
• Enerjik Kissi (Kee-shee): they where born from chaos; called "anti-angel", the opposite of an angel.
• Aqua Regia: a drink that can only be found in Hell.
• The Codex: the book of all knowledge.
• Drifters: term that Stark uses to name a Zombie. They are the dumbest of their kind..
• Lacunas: these are a little smarter than Drifters,
• Saperes aka Savants: those are the smartest Zombies, they look and act human until they eat you.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Sandman Slim, and followed by Aloha from Hell.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Richard Kadrey (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Amazon.com's Best Books (2010: Science Fiction & Fantasy, #10)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3561.A3616 K55 2010
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Add a note to help parents select a book for a child.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Fantasy
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history