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No Room in Hell #1
The Good, The Bad, And The Undead
When the dead walk the earth, everyone has an agenda...
St. Louis Detective Marcus Danziger seeks clues to his daughter's pre-apocalyptic murder by a serial killer. Excused from the case, Danziger returns to his precinct after the zombie outbreak with only one goal on his mind: to retrieve the evidence to destroy the killer before the entire city falls to the undead and the murderer escapes to the safety of Fort Leonard Wood.
In a world where the rules no longer apply, Danziger won't allow the living or the dead to stop him.
St. Louis Detective Marcus Danziger seeks clues to his daughter's pre-apocalyptic murder by a serial killer. Excused from the case, Danziger returns to his precinct after the zombie outbreak with only one goal on his mind: to retrieve the evidence to destroy the killer before the entire city falls to the undead and the murderer escapes to the safety of Fort Leonard Wood.
In a world where the rules no longer apply, Danziger won't allow the living or the dead to stop him.
300 pages, Paperback
Published February 1, 2017
4 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
William Schlichter
14 books83 followersWilliam Schlichter has a Bachelor of Science in Education emphasizing English from Southeast Missouri State, a Masters of Arts in Theater from Missouri State University, and a Master of Fine Arts from Spalding University. With twenty-two years of teaching English/Speech/Theater, he has returned to making writing his priority. Recent successes with scriptwriting earned him third place in the 2013 Broadcast Education Association National Festival of Media Arts for writing a TV Spec Script episode of The Walking Dead.
His full-length feature script, Incinta, was an officially selected finalist in the 2014 New Orleans Horror Film Festival. Incinta received recognition again by being selected as a finalist at the 2015 Beverly Hills Film Festival for a full-length feature. Incinta has advanced in several other script contests, including most recently being an Official Selected finalist in The 2016 Irvine Film Festival. His next life goal would be to see his film transferred from the pages to the screen.
Writing has always been his passion even through travelling, raising twin children and educating teenagers. While he specializes in the phantasmagorical world of the undead and science fiction fantasy stories, William continues to teach acting, composition and creative writing.
His full-length feature script, Incinta, was an officially selected finalist in the 2014 New Orleans Horror Film Festival. Incinta received recognition again by being selected as a finalist at the 2015 Beverly Hills Film Festival for a full-length feature. Incinta has advanced in several other script contests, including most recently being an Official Selected finalist in The 2016 Irvine Film Festival. His next life goal would be to see his film transferred from the pages to the screen.
Writing has always been his passion even through travelling, raising twin children and educating teenagers. While he specializes in the phantasmagorical world of the undead and science fiction fantasy stories, William continues to teach acting, composition and creative writing.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 16, 2016
Waiting
Looking forward to the next chapter in this author's world. Fast paced, raw and a truly great read. Keep them coming.
Looking forward to the next chapter in this author's world. Fast paced, raw and a truly great read. Keep them coming.
December 9, 2016
Captivating and gut-wrenching, I'm sticking around for the rest of the series. Brilliant ideas and planning have been set forth to make it as realistic and accurate as possible in the apocalypse. Using real locations to scale and amazing strategic planning two protagonists make their way through the undead wastes. Danzinger tries to find his daughter's sadistic killer while Ethan tries to rebuild from the ruins as the enemy seeks to destroy it.
November 30, 2016
This book is very well written. I would recommend this book to anyone who's definitely interested in stuff like the zombie apocalypse. You will fall in love with the characters and every chapter keeps you wanting to know more. I'm excited for the next book to come out so I can found out what happens!
March 29, 2017
Personally, this book is rated as one of my favorites and I would recommend it to anyone with a taste for this kind of story. It had some flaws with the swapping between stories at the worst possible time but besides this it was intriguing from beginning to end. This book held my attention far longer than any other book in the past and I can NOT wait for the next book.
January 20, 2018
*Disclaimer: While my rating here says 2 stars, I would like to point out that I would actually give this book 2 and 1/2 stars if possible. It isn't bad, just average. See my review below for an explanation. In addition, please note that this review is based on the Kindle version of this book, and that this is the first book I've read in the "Zombie Apocalypse" or "Modern Horror" genres, so take my review with a grain of salt.*
*Sigh* I've been dreading writing a review about this book, because my feelings about it are rather mixed. On the one hand, it's not necessarily a bad book, especially not for the first novel by a new author, but on the other hand it is exceedingly average at best and contains more than a few issues. If I were to rate different parts of the book here, I'd say the first third of the novel is a solid two-star experience, with bad writing, numerous tropes and stereotypes that fans of The Walking Dead will see from a mile away, not to mention numerous grammatical and punctuation mistakes. But things do pick up from there, and after that first ten chapters or so, The Good, the Bad, and the Undead becomes a more fascinating tale, engrossing the reader with quick-paced action and a world on the brink of ruin.
The problem though is even getting past this first third of the book, the novel is positively plagued with grammatical and punctuation issues. I realize of course that for books like this, that were essentially self-published, that most authors don't have the resources for professional editors to go through and proofread their work. Even so, I've encountered more grammatical and punctuation errors in The Good, the Bad, and the Undead than I have in most of the other books I've read, including a number of other self-published books. For example, there's several parts of this book with missing or misplaced quotation marks, sometimes failing to enclose a paragraph of dialogue, and sometimes just hanging off at the end of a descriptive paragraph that didn't have anyone speaking at all. There's perhaps a dozen or more of these missing and misplaced quotation mark issues alone, without even beginning to account for other grammatical issues.
There's also a few areas where words are clearly missing, the author perhaps jumping ahead while typing and simply missing these blind spots while proofreading. There's a few sentences like this in the book, which doesn't prevent one from moving on, but does trip up the reader a bit. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there's also a few cases where extra words were added by mistake, mostly the typical typos we all make every once in a while. If we're being truly nitpicky, there's also several cases where the plural form of a word is used when it should be the singular, and vice versa. In one chapter there's about five of these plural/singular mix-ups in a row, which is perhaps the only reason why I noticed them.
Ah, but this review has gotten a bit garrulous with the grammatical notes, I hadn't intended to drone on quite this long about what is, for most readers, a minor issue. Instead, let's talk a bit about the content of The Good, the Bad, and the Undead. First and foremost, the book opens up on a rape scene, which depending on your personal opinion, is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid on the author's part, and this will likely turn off some readers right away. I myself don't much care for it, and this first rape scene is only one of many throughout the book, to the point that it honestly becomes both tiresome and incredibly disturbing at the same time.
This drives to the heart of the core problem that The Good, the Bad, and the Undead has, and that's with the representation and depiction of women. Pretty much all of the female characters in this book fall into one of two categories, "spoiled brat" or rape victim or otherwise victims of domestic abuse. These characters seem to have no personal agency, they are constantly either being rescued or tormented by men. In a couple of rare cases, we do see female soldiers who are more than capable of taking care of themselves, but they come and go quickly with only a few pages referencing them. The vast, vast majority of the time we see female characters who fall into the other two categories, and quite frankly this isn't helped by some rather "cringy" writing. Oh how I detest that word! But I must admit it fits here, for there are many scenes that just made me shake my head in embarrassment. For example, during one of the many rape scenes in this book, the girl expresses to "like it" (though to be fair, she does fight back in the end). In other cases, the dialogue and sexual thoughts written from the perspective of the younger female characters is just downright bad.
Overall, the author just seems a tad too obsessed with rape scenes and violence towards women, and the book really could've used some balancing in this respect. I realize that realistically, in an apocalyptic scenario of this nature, that such disturbing crimes are more than likely to take place, but I still can't help but feel that even one prominent strong female character would've really helped to balance out the numerous graphic depictions of victimization.
Of course, that's not the only issue I have with this book, for as troubling as all of the rapes and domestic abuses are, the fact of the matter is that the author's characterization is perhaps the book's weakest link. Our protagonists are essentially stereotypes, we have the typical rough & gruff gunslinger who saves the day, and a police detective obsessed with finding his daughter's killer. Not exactly the most original stuff on the planet, and we don't really see our heroes grow that much throughout the book. Our gunslinger gets a bit softer perhaps, we see his human side here and there, but he's still off to save the day single-handedly as much at the end as he was in the beginning. There just doesn't seem to be that much character-progression here, and the other characters in the book are largely two-dimensional caricatures that you might expect to find in any zombie apocalypse story.
I will say that the author does show a fair bit of strength in the world-building department, with vividly painted scenes, and an excellent understanding of Missouri geography that presents a realistic world to draw you in. Add to this some fast-paced action to keep you hooked, and you'll be engrossed for much of the novel, despite some of the aforementioned disturbing elements in the story.
Overall, for a first book it's really not as bad as my review might make it out to be, again I would say it is a decidedly average book and I think fans of zombie apocalypse literature will like it despite my complaints. Still, there's not really enough here for me to give it a strong recommendation, there's too many issues I have with it, but it'll satisfy some readers and hopefully the newer books in the series will qualm some of my concerns.
My Rating: 2 1/2 Stars
Recommended For: Zombie Fans, Thriller Enthusiasts, and those just looking for a quick and fast-paced book to read.
*Sigh* I've been dreading writing a review about this book, because my feelings about it are rather mixed. On the one hand, it's not necessarily a bad book, especially not for the first novel by a new author, but on the other hand it is exceedingly average at best and contains more than a few issues. If I were to rate different parts of the book here, I'd say the first third of the novel is a solid two-star experience, with bad writing, numerous tropes and stereotypes that fans of The Walking Dead will see from a mile away, not to mention numerous grammatical and punctuation mistakes. But things do pick up from there, and after that first ten chapters or so, The Good, the Bad, and the Undead becomes a more fascinating tale, engrossing the reader with quick-paced action and a world on the brink of ruin.
The problem though is even getting past this first third of the book, the novel is positively plagued with grammatical and punctuation issues. I realize of course that for books like this, that were essentially self-published, that most authors don't have the resources for professional editors to go through and proofread their work. Even so, I've encountered more grammatical and punctuation errors in The Good, the Bad, and the Undead than I have in most of the other books I've read, including a number of other self-published books. For example, there's several parts of this book with missing or misplaced quotation marks, sometimes failing to enclose a paragraph of dialogue, and sometimes just hanging off at the end of a descriptive paragraph that didn't have anyone speaking at all. There's perhaps a dozen or more of these missing and misplaced quotation mark issues alone, without even beginning to account for other grammatical issues.
There's also a few areas where words are clearly missing, the author perhaps jumping ahead while typing and simply missing these blind spots while proofreading. There's a few sentences like this in the book, which doesn't prevent one from moving on, but does trip up the reader a bit. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there's also a few cases where extra words were added by mistake, mostly the typical typos we all make every once in a while. If we're being truly nitpicky, there's also several cases where the plural form of a word is used when it should be the singular, and vice versa. In one chapter there's about five of these plural/singular mix-ups in a row, which is perhaps the only reason why I noticed them.
Ah, but this review has gotten a bit garrulous with the grammatical notes, I hadn't intended to drone on quite this long about what is, for most readers, a minor issue. Instead, let's talk a bit about the content of The Good, the Bad, and the Undead. First and foremost, the book opens up on a rape scene, which depending on your personal opinion, is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid on the author's part, and this will likely turn off some readers right away. I myself don't much care for it, and this first rape scene is only one of many throughout the book, to the point that it honestly becomes both tiresome and incredibly disturbing at the same time.
This drives to the heart of the core problem that The Good, the Bad, and the Undead has, and that's with the representation and depiction of women. Pretty much all of the female characters in this book fall into one of two categories, "spoiled brat" or rape victim or otherwise victims of domestic abuse. These characters seem to have no personal agency, they are constantly either being rescued or tormented by men. In a couple of rare cases, we do see female soldiers who are more than capable of taking care of themselves, but they come and go quickly with only a few pages referencing them. The vast, vast majority of the time we see female characters who fall into the other two categories, and quite frankly this isn't helped by some rather "cringy" writing. Oh how I detest that word! But I must admit it fits here, for there are many scenes that just made me shake my head in embarrassment. For example, during one of the many rape scenes in this book, the girl expresses to "like it" (though to be fair, she does fight back in the end). In other cases, the dialogue and sexual thoughts written from the perspective of the younger female characters is just downright bad.
Overall, the author just seems a tad too obsessed with rape scenes and violence towards women, and the book really could've used some balancing in this respect. I realize that realistically, in an apocalyptic scenario of this nature, that such disturbing crimes are more than likely to take place, but I still can't help but feel that even one prominent strong female character would've really helped to balance out the numerous graphic depictions of victimization.
Of course, that's not the only issue I have with this book, for as troubling as all of the rapes and domestic abuses are, the fact of the matter is that the author's characterization is perhaps the book's weakest link. Our protagonists are essentially stereotypes, we have the typical rough & gruff gunslinger who saves the day, and a police detective obsessed with finding his daughter's killer. Not exactly the most original stuff on the planet, and we don't really see our heroes grow that much throughout the book. Our gunslinger gets a bit softer perhaps, we see his human side here and there, but he's still off to save the day single-handedly as much at the end as he was in the beginning. There just doesn't seem to be that much character-progression here, and the other characters in the book are largely two-dimensional caricatures that you might expect to find in any zombie apocalypse story.
I will say that the author does show a fair bit of strength in the world-building department, with vividly painted scenes, and an excellent understanding of Missouri geography that presents a realistic world to draw you in. Add to this some fast-paced action to keep you hooked, and you'll be engrossed for much of the novel, despite some of the aforementioned disturbing elements in the story.
Overall, for a first book it's really not as bad as my review might make it out to be, again I would say it is a decidedly average book and I think fans of zombie apocalypse literature will like it despite my complaints. Still, there's not really enough here for me to give it a strong recommendation, there's too many issues I have with it, but it'll satisfy some readers and hopefully the newer books in the series will qualm some of my concerns.
My Rating: 2 1/2 Stars
Recommended For: Zombie Fans, Thriller Enthusiasts, and those just looking for a quick and fast-paced book to read.
April 26, 2022
I do not understand how one book can solely be comprised of so much rape and murder of women and barely follow the synopsis. There are no trigger warnings for those who may need them, and the amount of writing revolving around UNDERAGE girls and sex is astronomical. I forced myself to read nearly to the end until I had to just rifle through everything left because I just kept coming across sexual content, usually with someone under the age of 16 with a grown adult. It seems this author mainly wrote about how useless women are in an apocalypse, how they are only good for sexual trade or rape, and further on I had the displeasure of reading one of the most disturbing sex scenes involving a dead/ dying woman I have ever read. I cannot believe there is a sequel to this.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 27, 2021
While this type of book isn't normally my preferred reading I enjoyed it. I was taken into the world in the first chapter and wanted to see where it would go. I was not disappointed and will have to read more in the series to see what happens next. Read review
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews