The Undertaker #3: The Thin Black Line, by John Doe
February, 2026 Tocsin Press
Great news, everyone – the third volume of The Undertaker is finally here! Published by Tocsin Press, The Thin Black Line sees everyone’s favorite funeral director-slash-executioner Victor “The Undertaker” Underhill return for more darkly-humorous payback…and this time his sights are set on contraband and human trafficking, the immensely talented John Doe delivering a plot that takes in ICE, Border Patrol, and the Cartels.
You’ll want to just order the book, but I’ll go ahead and rave about it anyway. This one comes off like a combo of Death Transition in that it has a serious plot that is treated with dark humor, and only later on does it bring in the slapstick vibe of Black Lives Murder. It’s also slightly longer than the previous books, but Doe does a phenomenal job of ramping up the tension as the book progresses, expertly bringing together the various strands of plot.
One thing I was surprised about was that ICE protesters are not given much narrative space; after the pitch-perfect gutting of the BLM and antifa cannon fodder in the previous book, I figured we’d get more spoofery of people who are so deluded that they carry around “No Kings” signs without it occurring to them that they live in a society where they actually have the freedom to carry “No Kings” signs. Instead, Doe’s focus is on ICE, Border Patrol, and the Cartels, and the protesters are mostly in the background – save for a hilarious part where redheaded dufus Deputy Harris, returning from the previous two books (and the guy who so humorously re-enacted the George Floyd situation in the previous book, though Harris was just trying to give a special Vietnamese massage), acts as ICE liason during a protest.
It’s a year after Black Lives Murder, and series protagonist Ivan Gore, a deputy in charge of homicide in Milton, is proud of himself that he’s gone all this time without encountering Victor “The Undertaker” Underhill, that John Milton-quoting funeral director with a penchant for disguise and for avenging the dead – an interesting take for sure, in that unlike most lone wolf men’s adventure protagonists, Underhill isn’t so much concerned about the living as he is about the dead.
John Doe also elaborates on a sort of metapysical bond between Underhill and Gore; that Gore has the same sort of potential as Underhill. As I’ve said before, The Undertaker is very much a Destroyer for today, and it seems clear that Ivan Gore will eventually become the Remo to Underhill’s Chiun, but I could be wrong. The Thin Black Line is cool because it focuses on how Gore keeps trying to ignore his “true self,” even though he and Underhill only share a few pages together in the book.
As we’ll recall, Gore has a history in the funeral business himself, given that his family ran a funeral home; Doe delivers a great prologue in which we see young Gore helping his uncle with the pilot light on a cremator – which so beautifully sets up a tense moment in the climax that I won’t spoil it. But now Gore is in his 30s and is a homicide detective for the sheriff’s department in Milton, and he’s trying not to think about Underhill anymore – and also not to think about Underhill’s sexy assistant, Alyssa Jensen, who was introduced in the previous volume and has a much larger role in this one.
As ever the series is set in the present day, and Doe brings in the current hot topic of ICE, which has shown up in Milton and nearby blue city Pandemont. Gore gets involved in ICE action when he responds to a call for cars, and he sees an Hispanic guy shot down by ICE as the guy is frantically knocking on the door of a house in a residential area – setting up a recurring “ringing ears” syndrome that plagues Gore through the book. That, and Gore’s certainty that something rotten is going on.
Taking up the dead man’s cell phone while no one is looking, Gore eventually goes to Alyssa, knowing she’ll be able to break into it. Meanwhile we readers learn via a variety of new characters that the cartels are involved, and – again not giving anything away – it also involves childcare services and human trafficking. The main character for a long stretch of the novel is none other than Deputy Harris, who is desperate to join ICE so he can be a big man; Doe’s humor is particularly acidic as the bumbling Harris is witness to all sorts of illegal activity, but is blissfully unaware of what he is really seeing. The Warren Murphy vibe is very strong in the scenes with Harris.
There are also great parts where Gore’s devotion to his wife, Amanda, is sorely tested. Out of state with family for the weekend, Amanda leaves Gore home alone, and he’s plagued by those ringing ears and his certainty that something rotten is going on, but struggling with whether he should go to Underhill with it. This sets up a great part where Gore first tries to take his mind off things by reading a “dog-eared copy” of a Super Cop Joe Blitz novel – probably the best imprint in-jokery since that night watchman mentioned that he had been reading too many volumes of The Executioner in The Penetrator #5 – and then later Gore must fend off the clear advances of Alyssa Jensen, who shows up with a bottle of wine and wants to talk about Underhill.
John Doe has long hinted that there is something special about Gore, which allows him to “be like Underhill,” per Alyssa, with the possibility dangling that there is a supernatural bent to The Undertaker. The implication is that Underhill, looking at a corpse, can detect whether the corpse was murdered or came to death via foul means, and thus goes out in vengeance. The difference here is that Gore is more concerned with preventing murders, which sets up a nicely-handled confrontation between Gore and Underhill.
This volume introduces a slightly more risque vibe with the Harris storyline; hanging out with some ICE agents – who curiously are all Mexican, sport tattoos, and appear to be former criminals – Harris sets his sights on a hotstuff Latina babe who takes him into her room for some drug-fueled shenanigans. This subplot has a great payoff later in the book, when Harris first goes to the massage parlor to proudly boast to his Vietnamese girlfriend that he’s now with ICE – which sets off a massage-parlor girl freak-out that could come right out of The Benny Hill Show – and then later Harris finds out he’s in hot water with the Latina babe, as well.
This however sets up an even more humorous situation, which to continue with the ‘70s TV comparisons is full-on Three’s Company: in one of the goofy misundertandings that was central to the comedy on that show, Gore makes a panicked call to Harris, having figured out that the cartel is trafficking “girls,” and Harris misunderstands Gore and thinks the “girls” he means are the Vietnamese massage-parlor girls, all of whom are here illegally. This brings more of the risque vibe in a houseful of naked or semi-naked Vietnamese girls, many of whom are just looking for their panties. A very funny slapstick scene, up there with anything in Black Lives Murder.
It isn’t all laughs, though; Gore’s painstaking trackdown of who the murdered Hispanic was and how he ties into another murdered Hispanic (this one a girl, who is coldly killed off in an affecting opening scene), is skillfully handled and the reader soon wants to see the villains pay, no matter what the reader’s politics or feelings about ICE may be. I thought this was incredibly pulled off, as John Doe makes the reader care about two illegals…both of whom are already dead.
Milton County is again brought to life – I loved the goofy Krispy-Tako place Gore eats at – and series regulars Sheriff Bullard and Deputy Jackson also appear, bringing a lot of continuity to the books. The one character who does not appear much is the title character; as with Death Transition, Victor Underhill is behind-the-scenes taking care of business, only appearing infrequently to dole out poetic justice. His hearse also plays into the finale, and once again his gift for disguise makes for a lot of surprise appearances. That said, when Underhill does appear, he always makes for the most memorable character.
The novel ends with Gore finding out something from his past that might indicate which side of the “thin black line” he’s on. And also, if he was concerned about his feelings about Alyssa Jensen before, its’ nothing compared to how he feels about her by novel’s end. She features with Gore in a great climax, which again I promise not to spoil, in which John Doe brings together the entire plot and the mechanics of cremation, even tying back to the opening scene with young Ivan Gore.
All told, this was a great novel, and again Doe brings in a slight bit of a Don Pendleton vibe to the narrative, from periodic one-sentence paragraphs to paragraphs that begin with “Yeah.” He also does that Pendleton-esque stylistic gimmick of introducing a phrase early in the book and then periodically referring back to it; in the case of The Thin Black Line it’s how Gore, as a child, would stubbornly run through wild kudzu, and this becomes a metaphor of the overwhelming corruption and red tape the adult Gore still tries to run through.
Overall, The Thin Black Line is another highly-recommended novel in The Undertaker, and you should head over to Tocsin Press to pick it up…and the first two volumes, if you haven’t already! Once again I’ve failed to get across how truly a gifted of a writer John Doe is…despite coming in at 270+ pages, the novel never lags, and the insanity builds and builds to such a feverish pitch that you’ll be wrapped up in it by the end. Here’s hoping it doesn’t take another four years for the next volume!!