Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: John Arcudi
Artist: Tony Fejzula
Colourist: Andre May
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Price: $3.99

Hands up anyone who wants to be a detective when they grow up? Really? Have you got rocks in your head or something? Detectives, good ones anyway, are universally hated by colleagues and criminals alike, they have no social life, failed marriages, trust issues, bad diets and they take a gun on any date they do manage to get. What’s the attraction? Well, Dead Inside #3 makes a good case – see we’re doing the lingo already – for.

And certainly, Sheriff Detective Linda Caruso does a good job making the career look good in Dead Inside #3. It’s a darn good thing she does too because things go south in a big way before she even gets a chance to have that drink, never mind dinner and a date and a gun! Okay, maybe the gun.

Linda has been investigation the murder of Donny Gordo, a prisoner in the Mariposa County Jail. Despite a convenient confession, Linda knows something fishy is going on and the evidence doesn’t look good for her former partner and friend Paris. Before you can say ‘circumstantial’, Paris goes into full-on meltdown, getting his wife Julie mad at him for all the right and wrong reasons. And she blames Linda for the whole shebang!

So, I ask you, who’d be a detective? Much of Dead Inside #3 is taken up with this marital element and the pace is noticeably slower than previous issues, but stick with it for the humdinger of an ending as everything Linda Caruso thought she knew suddenly goes into freefall. Dead Inside #3 is the thinking person’s detective yarn from the pen – well, word processor –of the always narrative solid, John Arcudi. And Mr Arcudi writes in that way to will keep you up at night wondering whodunit and why.

 

Reviewer: Gary Orchard
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker