Latest Book in Zombie History Craze Pits the Third Reich’s Finest Against the Haitian Undead
In the world of fiction, from “Hellboy” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Adolf Hitler and the Nazis are often given to fantastical machinations. In the world of Scott Kenemore’s new work of not-at-all historical fiction, “Zombies vs. Nazis: A Lost History of the Walking Dead,” the Third Reich sends three of their best agents to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to uncover the mysteries of the undead.
Kenemore is the author of five other semi-historical zombies novels, including “The Art of Zombie Warfare” and “The Zombie Pirate Code.” “Zombies vs. Nazis” is a short series of letters between the Nazi agents and their superior, known as Obergruppenfuhrer (a high paramilitary Nazi rank of the SS). The letters tell the story of how these agents discover successful Voodoo zombie rituals in Haiti. The agents’ leader, Gunter Knecht is both arrogant and sadistic, having proudly strangled a cat during SS training. With him are the more human, curious Inspector Gehrin, and the incompetent and fearful Inspector Baedecker. Together they pose as Jesuit lepidopterists from The University of Bonn.
While billed as a comedy, the book makes very little attempt to actually be funny—unless the reader is expected to laugh at the racist comments Knecht makes. There were plenty of opportunities to make the reader laugh, plenty of places to use sarcasm—and the book would have benefitted greatly from the author taking advantage of those opportunities.
The word Nazi now seems synonymous with humor. A Nazi joke is a good and easy joke. And zombies aren’t hard to make fun of either. Together, the two create a terrifyingly funny concept. Sadly, like his Nazi zombies, Kenemore’s writing could use some life of its own.
For most of the book, the reader has to trudge through the letters wondering when the zombies are going to attack and wreak havoc. They actually don’t. The end, unfortunately, sets the book up for a sequel. While there is plenty of violence, none of it is committed by the zombies. The (anti-)climactic battle between the zombies and Nazis is hardly a battle. The zombies just stand around waiting for the Nazis to run away, making the title a little misleading. (Never mind the cover, which promises Hitler being eaten by conspicuously hook-nosed Zombies.)
Kenemore is not even consistent in making racist remarks about Jews in the book. All of these letters are Nazis reporting to their SS superior. The audience expects a certain degree of stereotypical Nazi hate speech. The characters should be putting the word “filthy” in front of the word Jew. But Kenemore is far more consistent in referring to Father Gill, an Irish Priest, as a loud drunk. It would be better to be true to the character than to be afraid of sounding racist. It is understandable that Kenemore doesn’t want to offend anyone, German or Jew, but to be realistic, Nazi jokes are funny. Mel Brooks built his career on Nazi jokes. If Kenemore thinks that he won’t sell as many books because he may sound racist then he is being dishonest to his audience. He should have nothing to fear. (“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,”) anyone? The premise of this book would have defended the author.
What “Zombies vs. Nazis” really needed was more description. Kenemore passes up great opportunities to seriously disgust and scare his reader. His first description of the Zombies does neither, nor do any successive descriptions. For a book comprised of letters between SS agents and their superior, it is surprising how little detail is included.
It’s not as if these characters are in the middle of a combat zone. They’re merely lounging around in Haiti. For most of the book, the agents have plenty of time to write pages and pages of detail. At the first zombie encounter, Kenemore says that a zombie smells like “a lengthy internment beneath the soil.” How many people reading this book know what a corpse smells like? It is hard to imagine the books young target audience finding the book entertaining. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone finding this book entertaining.
Since this book is clearly just for fun, most of this is excusable. What isn’t excusable is that, despite being just for fun, the book was no fun to read. It was boring and trite. It pales in comparison to similar works like the uber-work of the budding period zombie fiction genre, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. True, Grahame-Smith worked from Austen’s classic work, but his book was hilarious. He took you on an adventure in which Elizabeth Bennet not only falls in love, but also kicks butt. “Zombies vs. Nazis” follows three characters as boring as they are unlikable because they are serious Nazis who kinda sorta create a zombie army for the Third Reich.
In his preface, Kenemore calls himself, “something of an expert on Zombies.” After writing five books on the subject maybe he is. However, judging from this book, he is no expert in fun storytelling. He could have had a zombie episode of “Hogan’s Heroes,” but he got something far more lifeless.
Geoffrey Edelstein’s is a junior at Drew University, where he is the former life & arts editor and current managing editor of Drew’s student newspaper, The Acorn.
