Literature / Only the Dead Are Cold-Blooded

Life under the new regime had its advantages. But there were some things a person missed.

Only the Dead Are Cold-Blooded is a Web Serial Novel which began publication in April 2024. It tells the story of Carl Meier, a civil servant in a dystopian regime. Carl lives alone, works for his city's Security Force, and has a secret habit of reading banned books. The plot kicks off when Carl's superior, Eisenherz, assigns Carl an apprentice—a naive and ambitous young woman named Elena, who happens to be Eisenherz's niece.

Another plot thread involves a prostitute named Jenny; her rich client, Bäumer; and a Black Market book dealer called Crow.

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Only the Dead Are Cold-Blooded contains examples of:

• Ambiguous Time Period: The story takes place in the year 19—. The Commie Land setting implies it's during The Cold War, but the technology level skews just a tad early for this: for example, the narrative points out that the elevator is automatic (i.e., doesn't have a human operator), and people have radios but not televisions in their homes. On the other hand, CCTV does exist, though it may not be widespread.
• Aroused by Their Voice: Jenny enjoys listening to the farm report on the radio, less because it's relevant to her studies and more because the announcer has an attractive voice.
• Bad to the Last Drop: Centrally brewed coffee is "lukewarm, bitter, rusty, and drugged."
• Big Secret: Carl is pressured into confessing to something scandalous (supposedly being gay) in order to cover up something actually criminal (buying contraband books).
• Bird-Poop Gag: A minor character has designed a rainwater-collecting apparatus that's "supposedly birdshit-proof."
• Bizarre Beverage Use: One character uses beer as an improvised treatment for severely dry eyes.
• Black Market: The first chapter alone mentions contraband trade in chocolate, coffee, and banned books.
• Black Market Produce: Bäumer treats Jenny to all sorts of dubiously sourced luxury foods, including citrus fruits.
• Book Burning: Played with. Carl burns the occasional book, not because he's the Culture Police, but to destroy evidence of his own illegal reading habits.
• Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: There's a passing mention of "the chattering of the loudspeakers." In addition, private homes are equipped with radio receivers that can't be turned off (though they can be muffled).
• Career Versus Man: Implied. The title "Mrs." exists within this universe, but the women we see working for the Security Force all use the title "Miss." Meanwhile, at least one male employee is explicitly a family man.
• Celibate Hero: Carl, the protagonist, deliberately abstains from relationships with women.
• Commie Land: Implied. The government publishes a magazine called The Worker's Respite, and one issue includes a joke that depends on the reader knowing a Marxist term.
• Complete-the-Quote Title: Chapter 5 is titled "Gin and Beer." The chapter does, in fact, show characters drinking these beverages—but it also focuses heavily on a character who's suffering from dehydration. The source of the quote, a passage from Rudyard Kipling's "Gunga Din," is about soldiers' need for water.
• Conveniently Common Kink: Bäumer brings different Noodle Implements to every date with Jenny. She's into it every time.
• Culture Police: Some or all pre-Revolutionary books are banned. Carl notes that books printed since the Revolution don't seem to contain any ideas.
• Description Cut: On the run after his shop is raided, Crow reflects that Bäumer, who was apparently caught in the raid, must be suffering in a "hell of scrutiny." The narrative then briefly switches to Bäumer relaxing alone in his apartment.
• Detrimental Determination: After the raid, Crow avoids drinking the drugged tap water in order to keep his head clear. He overcomes thirst by sheer willpower, but it backfires on him: he becomes so dehydrated that his cognition is impaired and his eyes dry out.
• Double Speak: The Security Force runs on vague, bland euphemisms. The word "conversation" can mean anything from a literal conversation, to Perp Sweating, to Cold-Blooded Torture at the hands of a reconciliation technician.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Bäumer briefly mistakes an effeminate male bartender for a "girl in pants."
• Eat the Rich: Jenny reads a joke in a propaganda magazine that references this:
  Question: When is an Eskimo a good socialist?
  Answer: When he eats the flesh of a rentier.
• Everybody Smokes: The main characters smoke cigarettes in several scenes, and two characters are specifically noted to be nonsmokers with the implication that it's unusual and a bit annoying. Even prisoners are given a (small) ration of tobacco.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The oppressive government publishes a propaganda magazine that includes invoked lame, borderline nonsensical jokes.
• Eye Scream: A character becomes so dehydrated that his eyes dry out, leaving him unable to close them and temporarily half-blind.
  Why had he sweat but no tears?
• Fag Hag: Crow describes Jenny as having a campily quasi-flirtatious relationship with the patrons of the Pine Tree Tavern:
  ...for some reason the f----ts there encouraged her. They flipped her coins—she could catch a groat from clear across the room—and they rushed to light her cigarettes.
• Fantastic Drug: The government spikes the water with AMP-M, which is amphetamine-like in low doses, but at higher doses induces a lethargic, zombie-like state.
• Fascists' Bed Time: Characters frequently worry about getting inside before curfew.
• Faux Yay: Played for drama. When Eisenherz suspects Carl of being gay, Carl plays along to deflect attention from a different secret. The ruse doesn't involve a fake relationship, though.
• Fictional Document: Carl is the author of two in-universe textbooks, Theory and Practice of Basic Conversation and Theory and Practice of Escalated Conversation. The author bio from one of these books is quoted as exposition.
• First Gray Hair: Carl finds a gray hair in the opening scene. It's not specified whether it's his first, but he immediately thinks about his age.
• Friend in the Black Market: Carl's friend Felix has sometimes tried to sell him smuggled chocolates.
• Friendly Shopkeeper: Crow the bookseller repeatedly goes the extra mile, becoming an expert in one customer's favorite (incredibly narrow) subgenre and buying hard-to-sell books from another customer out of sympathy.
• Fugitive Arc: After his shop is raided, Crow wanders through the city in a paranoid haze, believing himself to be pursued.
• Girl Friday: Greta Davidek, Carl's assistant. Carl entrusts her with so much responsibility that she's able to take over his entire job on short notice.
• Government Drug Enforcement: The tap water (and hot running coffee) are spiked with AMP-M. Everyone seems to know about it (it has a taste), and some characters deliberately avoid it.
• Hangover Sensitivity: When we first meet Jenny, she's having the kind of morning where even indirect sunlight is too much.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Jenny is a pleasure-seeking young woman who drinks heavily (when she can afford it).
• Heteronormative Crusader: The story takes place in a moderately homophobic society. Gay relationships are apparently decriminalized, but being outed still has the potential to destroy someone's career.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Jenny engages in sex work at least casually. She's very intuitive about others' feelings and becomes impulsively generous when drunk.
• Hypocrite:
  • Carl notices Technician Metzger's fetishistic approach to torture, and judges him for it. Carl himself takes sadistic enjoyment in his work—he's just more discreet about it.
  • Eisenherz treats Carl's unmarried status as shameful and suspicious. A couple of chapters later we learn that Eisenherz is unmarried.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: One of Carl's conversation partners was separated from his pregnant wife during their escape attempt and is very worried about her.
• Ironic Nickname: The building Carl works in is known as the Glass House, because it doesn't have any windows.
• Living a Double Life: Downplayed. Carl works for the oppressive regime, but secretly enjoys reading banned books.
• Mistaken for Gay: Played for Drama. Eisenherz is suspicious about Carl's sexuality because Carl is unmarried and has been seen entering a gay bar. Eisenherz is willing to turn a blind eye to this, despite social norms, because he thinks Elena will be safer being trained by someone who's not into girls.
• Must Have Caffeine: Apartment buildings are legally required to provide "centrally brewed coffee." Unfortunately, it's drugged.
• Must Have Nicotine:
  • Since Everybody Smokes, prisoners' tobacco rations are limited so cigarettes can be used as a carrot during Perp Sweating.
  • During Crow's Fugitive Arc, his inability to buy cigarettes is one of the many, many things stressing him out.
• Nephewism: Eisenherz states that he is the closest thing his niece, Elena, has to a father.
• Nepotism: Downplayed; it isn't clear to what extent Eisenherz is promoting Elena's career in the Security Force, but he does admit to using his position to ensure she's assigned the most suitable training supervisor. Elena realizes he's pulling strings for her and resents it.
• Never a Self-Made Woman: Elena (who has a powerful, nepotism-prone uncle) notices and resents this attitude.
  No one thought of her as an individual, only as a sort of appendage to the illustrious man.
• Noodle Implements: Bäumer brings a new assortment of "objects" to every date with Jenny. Downplayed, as all we're told about them is the materials they're made of—including wire and glass.
• One-Joke Fake Show: Crow has a customer who's devoted to a subgenre of books in which husbands and wives end up wearing each other's clothing.
• Outranking Your Job: Carl is the head of his department, but still performs some of the same tasks as the technicians who report to him. He does it to improve their morale, or at least that's what he tells Eisenherz.
• Professional Slacker: The first time we see Carl at work, he locks himself in his office and kills time reading something completely unrelated to his job.
• Red Light District: A neighborhood known as the Byzantine is established as containing brothels, at least one gay bar, and at least one porn shop.
• Rhyming Names: "Unified Municipal Security Force" is shortened to "Security Force" in dignified contexts. But when the agents are making dark jokes about it, they call it "Uni Muni."
• Sadist:
  • Technician Metzger bruises the bodies of his conversation partners in a patterned, ritualized way that Carl thinks is obviously fetishistic.
  • Carl himself goes home and masturbates after a good conversation.
• Secret Shop: Crow's bookstore is highly illegal, so getting into it involves making an appointment via a third party, exchanging hand signals, and whistling.
• She Is All Grown Up: While speaking with Elena, Carl has a flashback to first meeting her when she was very, very little. Then he takes another look at the woman in front of him.
  The child vanished from his mind.
• Songs in the Key of Lock: Part of the process for gaining entry to Crow's bookstore is whistling a musical password.
• Switching P.O.V.: There are five POV characters distributed across two plot threads.
• Tastes Like Friendship: Variant; Jenny befriends Crow by offering him cigarettes.
• Thirsty Desert: The "maddened by thirst" aspect of this trope is played out in an unusual environment: A character becomes debilitatingly dehydrated in the middle of a bustling city because of his refusal to drink the drugged water.
• This Bed of Rose's: When Crow is on the run, Elena offers him hospitality.
• Torture Technician: "Conversations" are performed systematically, progressing through three levels of severity. They are conducted by specialists whose job title is Reconciliation Technician.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: One plot thread involves Carl's work with the Security Force. The other involves Jenny scrabbling for survival and getting mixed up with dangerous men.
• Undiscriminating Addict: Jenny is a heavy drinker. When she doesn't have alcohol, she resorts to drinking tap water instead.
• The War Just Before: The story takes place a couple of decades after a revolution. Carl served in the Revolutionary Army, and several characters work for the postrevolutionary government.
• Water Source Tampering: Government Drug Enforcement is accomplished via the water supply. As a result, rainwater collection has become a cottage industry.
• Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: The Pine Tree Tavern is a pub with a gay male clientele. It also serves as the entrance point to a bookstore that caters to people of all sexualities.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The setting is implied to be a German-speaking Commie Land, has a northern land border (so not the GDR)—and calls its currency "dollars."
• Year X: When complete dates are provided, the year is always "19—."

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