The Woke and the Dead

 

The Woke and the Dead is a gritty procedural set in a huge fictive theme park in the Arizona desert, and the 5th book in the series by Mark S. Bacon. Released 13th March 2025, it's 347 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. 

This is a nice procedural whodunnit full of politics, American society and culture wars featuring an ensemble supporting cast alongside a cab driver/security investigator at a large retro 70s theme park city in Arizona. The actual underlying themes of current American culture wars "woke agenda" and conservative rhetoric could have been absolutely fraught with pitfalls but the author is impressively adept at avoiding the clichés and delivering a well-engineered readable mystery featuring a wryly humorous, intelligent protagonist, backed up by an impressively pragmatic and appealing (female) PR director, and assorted park employees. 

Content warning for all-too-real misogyny, hate, political rhetoric, and nastiness which is all-too-believable. There are a few mildly graphic descriptions (blood/shooting/etc). There's a lot of ammunitions/hardware in the book which may or may not be accurate (I don't have the background to comment, but presumably the author's background expertise make him well-informed to have the expertise to write about the subject). 

Four stars. Credible gritty mystery thriller in the same general genre as Daniel Silva, Ben Coes, and Robert Crais. With 5 books extant in the series, it would make a nice binge/buddy read, or possibly a mystery book club selection.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.