...the world of Casablantasy, where shining kingdoms are certainly not spread like blue mantles beneath the stars. Instead, the City: where corporate greed meets foul necromancy; the unrelenting advances of Maginology and the subtle menace of the Guilstapo exist beside squalid City breed cut throats and ogres with exaggerated axes. Here, the legend of Franklin 'Stubby' Mynos begins: a be-spectacled minotaur with a mind for Kryptic Krosswords and a stomach for Hurghian coffee. There's a killer on the loose, which is hardly news in a City crawlin' with killers; but this killer-The Hightown Hacker-is killing the wrong kinds of people, in the wrong kinds of places. City commerce is suffering. Rich and powerful people are getting scared. The City Watch's Magicrime Analysis Division (MAD) can't buy a trick, and the Body Politik Registry wants to pay Frank a stack of Swine to do the deed. It's his first big case, the one that would put him on the map, but he's not interested. He's more into some dead body swiped from the Embalmers' Guild and the ever-burgeoning zombie workforce: how they're recruited and have they got a Union? Forget what you've heard. This is the truth...or, at least, the facts strung together in a meaningful way.
You want the truth? Go see a poet. Missing, Presumed Undead is Elmore Leonard meets Dashiel Hammett meets Terry Pratchett...with China Mieville peering through the window (they got along fine until Terry spilt his tea all over Elmore's Italian sports jacket). It has an intriguing mystery-driven plot-with occasional madcap humor tempered by biting social satire-and is all set in a classical fantasy-style world with the mood and magic-driven "technology" of a Casablanca-style 30's detective story. It isn't so much hard-boiled as char-grilled, with a side salad.