The Last Mailman and Glossing Over Your Characters: A Book Review

*an e-book of this novel was provided by Permuted Press.

Author: Kevin J. Burke.

The Last Mailman is a zombie genre book from Permuted Press, which was recently re-released November 8th. This is author Kevin J. Burke's first novel and this book is one part action read and one part comedy. Unfortunately, the comedy is left behind in the first half of the book, but there are still some tongue-in-cheek moments later. Overall, this is a fairly average novel set in a zombie apocalypse as Burke tries to find his style in a action packed first outing.

The Mailman enters the undead riddled landscape to find possible survivors. Usually, he just finds more zombies as an infection has spread across the globe. There are infertility issues too. So, fertile men are recruited to do the deed with the mostly willing. Meanwhile, a cure for zombie bites has been discovered in Atlanta, so the mailman is sent to gather the cargo from New York. Several fertile women are sent along with the hero, with the plane crashing not even halfway there. Now these women, the Mailman, Jasper and a few other characters must fight their way out of a zombie holocaust.

If the Mailman was a material, then he would be made of Kevlar or something equally strong. When several of his friends die, he just keeps soldiering on. There is no depth of character below the shallow action hero exterior. Holly, his girlfriend, is unusually loyal and she brings neither complexity nor complaint to the equation, which does not seem believable at least to this reviewer. As well, Jasper plays the part of the antagonist early as he inadvertently disables the plane. He redeems himself later in the novel. Finally, the President of New New York is a minor character who gets the ball rolling to Atlanta. He finds tragedy on the political trail in the final few pages.

The main issue this reviewer has with Burke's novel is with the characters. They do not develop over time, nor do they respond to the difficulties of the situations. Great writing requires multi-layered characters. For instance, if you look at William Shakespeare's character Hamlet, you have a deeply conflicted character who is trying to deal with inter-family conflict through possible hallucinations. Or, with Charles Dicken's Pip in Great Expectations you have a character who is ashamed of his poor background. He tries to resolve his pride by seeking to become a gentleman of class throughout the novel. Both of these characters have internal conflicts which they are trying to understand, compensate for and eventually resolve. None of the characters in The Last Mailman have any such interesting issues and really the characters are kept on a pedestal where nothing can harm them. It becomes difficult to empathize with them or to connect with them in the story as they are mere cardboard cutouts of what they could potentially be.

In Burke's defence, he has an excellent knack for writing comedy especially through the use of quick one-liners. Some of the early dialogue had this zombie fiction fan laughing. Burke's comedy is unique in a genre that is sometimes overly devoid of laughs. However, Burke seems to leave what is unique about his style behind at the mid-point of the book.

To be fair, one should not compare an author's book to Shakespeare or Dickens. However, if you compare The Last Mailman to other first novels such as Michael Schuhler's Plague Apocalypse, Joe McKinney's Dead City or C. Dulaney's The Roads Less Traveled, this novel still comes across as being average. Even in Tony Faville's Kings of the Dead, this author knows how to treat characters. There is an understandable pause for the loss of a character. In The Last Mailman most of the primary characters and definitely the secondary characters die. At some point, you begin to lose track of who is alive and who is not. There is so little depth in the characterizations that it really did not matter to this reviewer who was alive or who is dead.

The Last Mailman is an average to slightly above average novel. Burke is finding his style in this first release and the results are comedic and sometimes shallow. Other first time novels keep it, understandably, cautious, but in this book the story is all over the place with the focus on action sequences. Better in the first half than the second, The Last Mailman is only given a luke warm recommend for the most devout zombie fiction fan, who is seeking out new material. You might want to try some of the other novels mentioned in this review, instead.

Overall: 6.5 out of 10 (for some reason the last 1/3 of the novel was a real slog and difficult to get through, lots of repetition of scenarios).

More details on this release at Permuted Press:

The Last Mailman at Permuted Press

A second review of this book at Buy Zombie (Stuart Conover):

The Last Mailman at Buy Zombie

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Posted in: 2011,2011 release,book review,horror,permuted press,zombie book review,zombie book review 2011