Bahia Vista, Florida, homicide detective Theo Petrakos finds himself in the middle of an out-of-this-world investigation when he stumbles upon a mummified corpse, a room full of high-tech hardware, and Guardian Force commander Jorie Mikkalah, with whom he teams up to battle a deadly plague of biomechanical organisms from using Earth as a breeding g

2008-01-23 Space aliens team up with Florida cop to defeat zombies

Theo Petrakos is a homicide detective in Bahia Vista and about to go on holiday for Christmas. However he finds himself involved in a case of a mysterious mummified man with an odd laptop and the laptop brings a strange group of people into his life. Jorie Mikkalah is a Guardian Force commander, a group of people who travel the galaxy to defeat the Zombies, drone-like beings who kill indiscriminately. When she realises Theo Petrakos has seen the alien laptop he is taken to their spacecraft to prepare for resettlement - people from low-technology worlds aren't allowed to know about the other races in space. However Theo convinces Jorie that he is needed to provide cover for them when working against the Zombies; although they speak a language which is similar to English there are also many differences. Theo has also proved himself able to fight a Zombie. Jorie and her crew return to the planet with Theo and start working on a machine to call the Zombies so that they can be destroyed. However when the rest of the team disappear Jorie and Theo have to work together with minimal technology in order to try to defeat the group of Zombies, one that they realise has been modified to be more dangerous. Jorie faces frightening aspects of her past as well as the difficulty of being alone on a strange world and attracted to Theo. Theo knows that he must gather more people to help them but is afraid that Jorie will be taken away by the FBI and never seen again. How can they succeed against so many Zombies with so little time and so few weapons and soldiers?

Although this story is billed as a romance the romantic element is subordinate to the overall plot of the fight against the zombies. In some ways, in fact, the romance felt like a very minor aspect. There's little disagreement and misunderstanding between Jorie and Theo, the main course of the romance between them is the difficulties of a cross-cultural relationship of a rather dramatic kind. The book is rather more focused on the fight against the Zombies and the different technology and skills that Jorie brings to Earth. Much is made of the different speech patterns between Jorie's Vekran and Theo's English, clearly a very similar language, and of the interest of Theo's family in his love life.

Although an interesting read this book did drag at times and there were rather too many unrealistic elements to the plotting timeline. It's very much a book for those who like space stories and aliens rather than those looking for a straight romance. All the characters were well drawn and interesting although we didn't find out very much about many of the 'baddies' but the story could have benefited from tighter writing in places.

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book © Helen Hancox 2008