Cover Unveiled for Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim

This may not be the final cover. The title treatment is great, but the detective's shadow might be a bit overdone since they are on Mike Carey's Felix Castor novels as well. Regardless, I have high hopes for this one as it will be the first of a 3 book Urban Fantasy series, that will probably be pretty bad ass. Kadrey's been around for a long time, although he is mostly known for his early cyberpunk stuff. Butcher Bird his first attempt at something like this was quite a treat and opened up the Urban Fantasy landscape to me. I also love the author's attitude. Here is some more info from the Author:

"The book is the first of a new series. It’s my crass attempt to cross urban fantasy with spaghetti westerns and 50s-60s era American crime fiction (think of Richard Stark’s Parker novels or Kubrick’s The Killing), all told in the voice of a snarky LA punk. Your basic revenge story with ritual magic, guns, decapitations, angels, devils, Homeland Security and skinheads. But funny. Funny decapitations. It’s about a guy named Stark, the LA punk I mentioned earlier. He’s part of a secret subculture of magic humans who call themselves the Sub Rosa. Before the book opens, Stark has been betrayed by some other Sub Rosas and sent to Hell in exchange for power. The book is about Stark crawling out of Hell and back to Earth to kill everybody who betrayed him and anyone who gets in his way. Like I said, it’s a comedy. It’s also NOT a noir mystery. I wanted to keep away from the Chandler and Hammet-isms of other books. I love both of those writers, but their bones have been picked clean by writers who are better at noir stuff than I am. Besides, the magical detective idea already exists. We don’t need another Harry Dresden because the last time I looked, the old one was still very much alive and doing quite well. Stark is the opposite of Dresden. He’s utterly untrained and not very good at detective work. He’s a punk, a fuck up and a killer. And he learned to kill while in Hell, so he’s not subtle about it."

Sounds like a great character. I'm all for a more hard edge detective and I think Kadrey has the chops to deliver.