After a handful of excellent short stories, Marc Collins delivers an exceptional first novel for Black Library with Grim Repast, a new addition to the growing Warhammer Crime range that’s both a gripping, bloody detective story and a bleak exploration of everyday 40k life. In Varangantua’s cold southern district of Polaris, probator Quillon Drask has a reputation that sees him constantly being landed with the darkest, most sinister cases to blight the city. When he’s called to the scene of a gruesome murder, it’s with a grim sense of inevitability that one death leads to another, and Drask soon finds himself chasing a killer and embroiled in a mystery that seems to run through every level of Polaris, both its streets and its society, leaving behind a trail of blood and death.
Every detective story lives or dies by the quality of its central character, and while Drask exhibits plenty of the usual tropes they’re combined in such a way as to make him both believable and grimly compelling to follow. He’s a man who sees patterns that others don’t but also darkness wherever he turns, who’s troubled and labouring under the shadows of his past, but determined to be his own man. These qualities make him a great detective if not a happy one, forever balanced on a knife-edge, and for all his insight and ability the work he undertakes brings him as much pain as it does comfort. As Drask says himself, there are “no gifts here…only curses.” If you can, it’s best to read the short story Cold Cases (in No Good Men) before this to get a deeper sense of Drask’s history, as the events of that story have a bearing on proceedings here, but it’s not essential.
Early on it becomes clear that this is an enjoyably noirish story, with both a troubled protagonist whose tormented thoughts won’t let him rest or look aside, and a great sense of atmosphere. While this is a crime novel not a horror novel it is genuinely quite gruesome in places, and Collins sets the tone right away, opening the first chapter with a scene of eye surgery that’s enough to set the squeamish squirming. There’s nothing gratuitous though, with the darkness and violence – whether shown or implied – always in service to the plot, and reminding the reader that 40k is a fundamentally grim setting. Polaris is “cold and bleak and unforgiving”, and its mixture of dingy squalor and extravagant, if fading, grandeur – because this is 40k, where the contrast between the privileged few and everyone else is turned up to 11 – is perfectly suited to a Warhammer Crime story.
And this really does feel like a proper crime novel – a serial killer story, to be specific – set in the 40k universe, equally enjoyable for its procedural elements and its exploration of ‘domestic 40k’. Collins continues the Warhammer Crime trend of really bringing Varangantua to life, populating his story with memorable characters and locations, and digging into classic 40k themes of faith and futility, power and inequality – in particular the vast gulf between the rich and all the rest. It all comes together into a satisfying whole that really elevates this still-developing range, continuing to add texture and detail to Varangantua as a setting while delivering the most confident and effective crime story yet. It’s an assured debut, and a hugely impressive one to boot. If you haven’t already got Collins on your radar, this will comfortably illustrate why you really should.
See also: my guide to the Warhammer Crime range so far.
Check out the links below to order your copy* of Grim Repast:
*If you buy anything using one of these links, I will receive a small affiliate commission – see here for more details.
If you enjoyed this interview and would like to support Track of Words, you can leave a tip on my Ko-Fi page.
