The Voice Said Kill

Park Ranger Marie Burgau was lucky.  Whatever was in the food or drink at her station’s most recent barbecue that caused her co-workers to go real crazy, she didn’t have any of because she’s pregnant.  Unfortunately, that meant when the local crime boss came knocking to pick up her lackeys and look for help finding her crazy son who wandered off into the bayou, it became Marie’s problem to handle.  The good thing is that she’s a very responsible ranger who’s been in difficult situations before and knows how to handle herself.  Those situations didn’t happen when she was pregnant, buto who’s to say how this one will be different.

Grounded Florida crime thriller set in the present day wasn’t something I was expecting to read from Simon Spurrier, but that unpredictability is what I like about the writer.  Though part of me wonders if he just saw a bunch of the “Florida Man” memes online and decided to write this story after doing some cursory research on the Sunshine State’s eccentricities.  Regardless of how this came about, it’s still a twisty tale that leads you around by the nose for a bit before it shows its hand.  This may be an unusual setting for the writer to play in, but the storytelling is still a good showcase for his strengths and quirks.

Artist Vanessa Del Rey is someone whose name I’ve seen on a lot of comics, but I’ve never actually read anything she’s illustrated.  That’s my loss as she turns in some appreciably gritty and tense work here.  It can be hard to communicate how a place feels through images, but Florida’s hot and humid nature really comes through on the page, which helps crank the tension here even more.  Del Rey is also good with a key part of the story:  Making its weirdos come off as appropriately threatening when needed.  While I don’t think “The Voice Said Kill” necessarily lends itself to setting up the further adventures of Marie Burgau, it does make a good case for its own existence as well as any future team-ups between Spurrier and Del Rey.