Life is going along at its usual grinding pace for Angel Crawford until she wakes in the hospital certain she is mortally wounded. It must have been some kind of hallucination though, as the bitch nurses insist her blood levels showed heavy use of drugs, and she has nary a scar to be seen. She is even more humiliated when she learns she was picked up alongside the road like buck naked trash.

Before she is released an anonymous gift of clothes and protein drink is left for her with a note. The writer of the note promises the news of her drug use will be kept quiet if she shows up at the morgue the next morning and works for a month driving the van. If not, the drug screen will be enough to violate her parole and she will end up back in jail.

For a girl who puked all over the biology class on frog dissection day, Angel finds handling dead bodies remarkably easy, until she notices her stomach growling each time she smells brains. As the reality of her situation becomes clear her pride in doing an important job well wars with the remnants of her old life. Worse, she perceives a pattern in a string of recent deaths that indicates a serial killer with a need for brains is on the loose, just when she is at her hungriest.

With a title like MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE Diana Rowland could have gone for a slick farcical take on a popular horror genre, but instead has written a thoughtful engrossing murder mystery with the most interesting of heroines. Despite the seedy underpinnings of Angel's old life (an alcoholic father and enabling druggie boyfriend among others) the storyline is a positive one and I found myself cheering for Angel from first page to last as she works her way through her bizarre new circumstance. A grand start to what I hope is a new mystery series.

Book Summary

Angel Crawford is a loser

Living with her alcoholic deadbeat dad in the swamps of southern Louisiana, she's a high school dropout with a pill habit and a criminal record who's been fired from more crap jobs than she can count. Now on probation for a felony, it seems that Angel will never pull herself out of the downward spiral her life has taken.

That is, until the day she wakes up in the ER after overdosing on painkillers. Angel remembers being in an horrible car crash, but she doesn't have a mark on her. To add to the weirdness, she receives an anonymous letter telling her there's a job waiting for her at the parish morgue--and that it's an offer she doesn't dare refuse.

Before she knows it she's dealing with a huge crush on a certain hunky deputy and a brand new addiction: an overpowering craving for brains. Plus, her morgue is filling up with the victims of a serial killer who decapitates his prey--just when she's hungriest!

Angel's going to have to grow up fast if she wants to keep this job and stay in one piece. Because if she doesn't, she's dead meat.

Literally.

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