Five, four, three, two...Jared Poe counts the days on Louisiana's Death Row. The controversial S&M photographer has been condemned to die for killing his lover. He doesn't know who did it. Only that he didn't.
Can he clear his name and find the real killer in time?
No. For this is no ordinary thriller. We are in the dark realm of The Crow, and Jared must feel the cold shudder of Death; must hear the beating of black wings; must prowl the shadowy goth netherworld of New Orleans, to prove he was no killer when he died.
And find out what kind of killer he has become.

Amazon.com Review

"The man who wears the names of rivers knows that he is no longer like other men, that some part of his fearful work has changed him forever and he can never return to the simple, painless life he lived before.... The invaders are everywhere, and Their agents are everywhere.... In [his] dreams They walk the streets without fear, spreading the androgyne contagion, and the sky burns with the roaring engines of Their warships."

In a novel about a serial killer, the evocation of the killer's madness can make or break the book. In The Crow: The Lazarus Heart , Poppy Z. Brite delivers her usual complement of gay/transsexual pale-faced lovelies dressed in black Lycra and lace, giving just enough of a spin to their aesthetics that they are mildly entertaining to read about. But the way she puts the good gory meat into the story is through the character of a mesmerizing serial killer whose unique brand of paranoia serves as a sly commentary on Brite's own fiction. This is a short and relatively simple novel for Brite, but its narrative momentum never lapses: the plot structure hangs together better than in her longer, more ambitious works. It's overwritten in places--Brite wants to use two similes where one will do--but it's fun. And that's what horror is all about. --Fiona Webster

About the Author

Poppy Z. Brite was born on May 25, 1967, in New Orleans. She has worked as an artist's model, a mouse caretaker, a stripper, and (since 1991) a full-time writer. She has published three Novels, Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, and Exquisite Corpse, and a short story collection, Wormwood. Her work has appeared in numerous markets including Rage, Spin, and The Village Voice. She is the editor of the anthologies Love in Vein I and II. In 1997, she published the biography Courtney Love: The Real Story. She is currently working on a new novel and readying her second collection of short stories for publication. Poppy Z. Brite lives in New Orleans with her husband Christopher, a chef and food writer.