DEPARTMENT ZERO

Fiction

Janitor for the multiverse

DEPARTMENT ZERO

By Paul Crilley

301 pp. Pyr Books

Reviewed by Eric Petersen

Scottish author Paul Crilley, best known as a children’s book writer, is back with another novel geared toward adult readers. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if H.P. Lovecraft and Douglas Adams had collaborated on a novel? Well, now you can find out.

When asked what he does for a living, Harry Priest, a sad-sack Englishman living in Los Angeles, (the author is a Scotsman who lives in South Africa) says that the polite term for his job is “biohazard remediation.” Another term for it is “crime and trauma scene decontamination.”

In other words, Harry is a 40-year-old janitor who cleans up crime and accident scenes after the police have done their work. He works for a company called LA Cleaners. His dim-bulb partner, Jorge, is the owner’s son.

Harry’s ex-wife Megan left him a while ago, disgusted by his lack of ambition. His only pleasure in life is calling his daughter Susan every night to tell her a bedtime story. But Harry’s life is about to change in ways that no one with a modicum of sanity could imagine.

As the novel opens, Harry and Jorge arrive to clean up a murder scene at a sleazy motel in the middle of nowhere. Right away, Harry senses that something’s wrong – there’s no crime scene tape, no forensics team, no police presence of any kind.

Then he opens the door to the room he’s supposed to clean, and the smell of rancid viscera ripened in the Southern California heat hits him in the face, making him toss his breakfast. The room looks like its occupant just exploded.

Harry finds a silver bullet in pristine condition on the floor, but his curiosity is thwarted by three people who arrive on the scene. The leader, a man called Havelock Graves, identifies himself as an ICD (Interstitial Crime Department) agent, claims jurisdiction over the crime scene, and sends Harry away.

He thinks no more about it until later that night, when he gets a call from a terrified Jorge. Harry goes to Jorge’s apartment, and his partner confesses to taking something from the crime scene. Jorge turns around to reveal a monstrous spider-like thing embedded in his back, its fangs piercing his skull as it sucks out his brains. Then the spider explodes, shooting out hundreds of babies. 

Then Harry finds a vicious monkey sitting on Jorge’s toilet. A vicious monkey with a human face who quotes Shakespeare. And the only weapon available is a fifteen-inch dildo, which Harry swings about like a Jedi light saber.

He flees Jorge’s apartment, but is chased through the streets by swarms of insects, the Shakespeare-quoting monkey, and other monstrosities that shouldn’t exist. Harry is saved at the last minute by a strange creature with a naked skull for a head that has runes and drawings etched into the bone.

Unfortunately, Harry panics and kills the creature, which takes off its head – actually a mask – and reveals himself to be one of the ICD agents from the crime scene at the motel. Harry puts on the skull mask and is transported into another reality.

Reunited with aforementioned Havelock Graves, Harry learns the mind-bending truth. The ICD is a police organization, all right. They investigate crimes in every universe in the multiverse. The classic horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft were based on fact, and the ICD is tasked with keeping the monstrosities described in Lovecraft’s stories from wreaking havoc.

Graves offers Harry a job with the ICD. He always wanted to be a cop, but he failed the entrance exam at the police academy. And the drug test. But Harry soon learns that Graves is lying to him. After the debacle in Harry’s reality that just cost an agent his life, Graves has been demoted to Department Zero – the crime scene cleanup division. 

He’s now doing Harry’s job – in every universe in the multiverse. Unwilling to be a lowly janitor, Graves has shanghaied Harry. He plans to get back into the ICD’s good graces by finding the fabled Spear of Destiny, which is also being sought by the Cult of Cthulhu and their hippie high priest, Nyarlathotep.

So, Harry and Graves travel the multiverse, searching for the Spear in worlds where sorcery is real, worlds where humans and elves co-exist, and worlds beyond imagination. If the Cult of Cthulhu finds the Spear first, they’ll use it to awaken the Great God from his eternal sleep in the Dreamlands.

If Cthulhu is awakened, every universe in the multiverse will cease to exist. And the multiverse’s only hope is Harry Priest. God save us all.

Department Zero is a wild roller coaster ride of a novel full of chuckles and chills that combines horror, science fiction, and fantasy with hilarious dialogue and Monty Python style silliness. (Oh, if only Terry Gilliam would adapt this as a film!) Highly recommended!

Eric Petersen is an administrator and blogmaster for the Internet Writing Workshop, an international, online writer’s group run out of Penn State University. You can reach him by e-mail at EricPetersen1970@hotmail.com