Book Review: Pay Me in Flesh by James Scott Bell

Goodreads Summary: Meet Mallory Caine. Attorney at law. Zombie at large. She's not like those "Living Dead" losers you see in the movies. She doesn't slobber, drool, or lurch. She's smart, stylish, and sexy. Sure, she's a zombie and a lawyer, but, hey, a girl's got to eat. When Mallory's not in the courtroom, going head to head with her ex-boyfriend, prosecutor Aaron Argula, she's in the seedy streets of Hollywood, hunting brain after brain. That is until some psycho starts hunting zombie after zombie...
The undead are decapitated, a letter "Z" carved in their flesh. Mallory doesn't want to lose her head, but she's worried. Like many lawyers in L.A., she doesn't have a soul, a side effect of being a zombie, not a defense attorney. If Mallory dies before she gets her soul back, she goes straight to hell. No appeals. Objection overruled. If the killer isn't stopped, it's case closed for zombies everywhere.

But Mallory is an undying champion of justice, and she won't go down without a bite...

The book that invented the zombie legal thriller is back. Originally published under the pen name K. Bennett, the Mallory Caine, Zombie-at-Law books are the work of James Scott Bell, winner of the International Thriller Writers Award and a former trial lawyer living (really and truly) in Los Angeles.

Goodreads Rating: 4.13 stars with over 20 ratings

Genre Listing: Legal Thriller, Zombie, Fiction

Goodreads Challenge: 24/60

2020 Reading Challenge: #37 Book 1 in a Trilogy (find the full challenge here)

Book Review:

I've accepted that I am going to be forever behind this year and every year. I'm three books behind already and start classes for grad school in July. I may be insane. I'm kind of jumping around on the challenge, but I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to read for the Trilogy this year. The challenge's co-creator, Tress, came to the rescue as always. She gave me the recommendation for Pay Me in Flesh, and I'm so glad she did.

This Zombie Legal Thriller reminds me a little of the show, iZombie. It could entirely just be because both feature a functional female zombie as the main character. Anyways, I found Mallory to be witty and fun to read about. My knowledge of being a lawyer is limited to binge watches of Law and Order SVU on ION, but I got the feeling that James Scott Bell really knows his stuff about practicing law. I didn't actually know he was a lawyer until I read the about the author page. 

I thought the internal struggle that Mallory had with being a Zombie was interesting, and the way she obtained her food through a different persona made it fun. She's got a snarky personality, that I love in main characters. I feel like the ex-boyfriend, Aaron will come up from time to time in the next book. I kept getting distracted when he was being referenced. His last name is Agrula, and my brain was determined to make it Arugula, which I couldn't unread. 

The case was interesting, and I was curious to find out who was framing Traci Ann. I definitely caught what I thought to be Elvyria and Trueblood references in the story. Max is an interesting little owl, who I can't wait to read more about. The book kind of started to lose me a little during the end when it became a god vs. demon kind of thing. It's entirely possible it was just my attention span, though, and not the book. 

Overall, I really enjoyed Pay Me in Flesh. The main character is smart and snarky, the story moves fast and doesn't drone on. The author's experience as a lawyer comes through, so Mallory is a believable character. It's only 300 or so pages, so it's a quick read. I didn't have anything that really took me out of the story, even if I was scatter-brained while reading it.