Inspector of the Dead Read online

  My wife, Donna, gave her usual excellent advice. It takes a special personality to be married to a writer. I thank her for her decades of patience and understanding when each day for many hours I become a hermit.

  David Morrell is an Edgar and Anthony finalist, a Nero and Macavity winner, and a recipient of the prestigious career achievement ThrillerMaster award from the International Thriller Writers. His debut novel, First Blood, introduced the character Rambo to the world. He has written twenty-nine works of fiction that have been translated into thirty languages. He is a former literature professor at the University of Iowa and received his PhD from Pennsylvania State University.

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  @_DavidMorrell

  DavidMorrellAuthor

  Also by David Morrell

  Novels

  First Blood

  Testament

  Last Reveille

  The Totem

  Blood Oath

  The Brotherhood of the Rose

  The Fraternity of the Stone

  Rambo (First Blood Part II)

  The League of Night and Fog

  Rambo III

  The Fifth Profession

  The Covenant of the Flame

  Assumed Identity

  Desperate Measures

  The Totem (Complete and Unaltered)

  Extreme Denial

  Double Image

  Burnt Sienna

  Long Lost

  The Protector

  Creepers

  Scavenger

  The Spy Who Came for Christmas

  The Shimmer

  The Naked Edge

  Murder as a Fine Art

  Short Fiction

  The Hundred-Year Christmas

  Black Evening

  Nightscape

  Illustrated Fiction

  Captain America: The Chosen

  Amazing Spider-Man: Peter Parker—The One and Only

  Nonfiction

  John Barth: An Introduction

  Fireflies: A Father’s Tale of Love and Loss

  The Successful Novelist: A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing

  Edited By

  American Fiction, American Myth: Essays by Philip Young

  edited by David Morrell and Sandra Spanier

  Tesseracts Thirteen: Chilling Tales of the Great White North

  edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell

  Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads

  edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Epigraph

  One: The Killing Zone

  Two: The Curtained Pew

  Three: The House of Death

  Four: The Crystal Palace

  Five: The Throne Room

  Six: The Warehouse of Grief

  Seven: The Palace Dinner

  Eight: The Wheel of Fortune

  Nine: Bedlam

  Ten: Watford

  Eleven: A Darkness within a Darkness

  Twelve: From the Workhouse to the Graveyard

  Thirteen: A Bottomless Inner World

  Afterword: More Adventures with the Opium-Eater

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by David Morrell

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2015 by Morrell Enterprises, Inc.

  Author photograph by Jennifer Esperanza

  Cover design by Matt Tanner; art by Marc Yankus

  Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  First ebook edition: March 2015

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-32396-3

  E3