When the city sleeps, the dead start to walk. Something has sealed off Cardiff, and living corpses are stalking the streets, leaving a trail of half-eaten bodies. Animals are butchered. A young couple in their car never reach their home. A stolen yacht is brought back to shore, carrying only human remains. And a couple of girls heading back from the pub watch the mysterious drivers of a big black SUV take over a crime scene. Torchwood have to deal with the intangible barrier surrounding Cardiff, and some unidentified space debris that seems to be regenerating itself. Plus, of course, the all-night zombie horror show...

Bay of the Dead is an admirable job at trying to bring a zombie tale to Torchwood. Sadly, and mainly down to the fact that the zombie genre has been done to death [yes there will be plenty more puns like this, get over it], there's very little new here.

I felt for author Mark Morris, as his writing is tight and engaging, it's just that his subject matter is so limiting that he was always going to be on a hiding to nothing trying to breathe new life into the basic zombie mythology.

I was also surprised that, on reflection, over the course of this book's 239 pages not a great deal actually happens. "Zombies invade Cardiff" really does just sum up the entire story. The conclusion was also wrapped up way too quickly, with a bizarre and rather lazy plot twist thrown at the reader (for a moment I thought I was revisiting the laughably bad Indiana Jones and the City of the Crystal Maze, or whatever it was called. Yes the title of the fourth Indiana Jones movie was as memorable as the plot).

While an entertaining enough read, there just didn't seem to be any meat on the bones of this rather cliched zombie tale.

6

Darren Rea