Genre: paranormal

#HugoReview: When He Calls Your Name by Catherynne M. Valente

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> novelette review> Short Story Review
#HugoReview: When He Calls Your Name by Catherynne M. Valente"When He Calls Your Name" by Catherynne M. Valente in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 65, July/August 2025 by Catherynne M. Valente
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine
Genres: fantasy, horror, paranormal, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine Issue 65 July/August 2025
Pages: 35
Published by Uncanny Magazine on July 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The July/August 2025 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring all-new short fiction by John Chu, Catherynne M. Valente, Shveta Thakrar, Emma Törzs, Daniel H. Wilson, Jordan Taylor, and A. W. Prihandita; essays by J. R. Dawson, Brandon O’Brien, Charlie Jane Anders, and Amanda Wakaruk and Olav Rokne; poetry by Lora Gray, Shankar Narayan, Avra Margariti, and Prosper C. Ìféányí; interviews with Catherynne M. Valente and Daniel H. Wilson by Caroline M. Yoachim; Nilah Magruder’s The Duet as the cover; and an editorial by Michael Damian Thomas.

My Review:

First, if you’ve never heard Dolly Parton’s classic song, “Jolene”, it’s probably best that you listen to it AFTER you read this take on it. “Jolene” is clearly the basis for this novelette, but I’m honestly not sure whether knowing the original will help or hurt in your interpretations of this re-interpretation.

At the same time, and in the same thought, if you’ve never heard, or heard of the Eldritch Horror version of “Jolene” , you REALLY don’t want to look that up until after you’ve finished the story. Because this story fits WAY BETTER into the Eldritch Horror version than it does the original.

The outline of the story is the same as the song. It’s the same as a lot of songs, actually. “Jolene” strolls into this small town, “steals” the narrator’s husband and comes to claim her “prize”. The scare quotes are because a person can’t be stolen in the way these stories usually mean, and frankly, Charlie is no prize for either of them.

The story is theoretically about a conversation between the narrator, the “wronged” wife, and the brazen, man-stealing hussy Jolene.

It’s in the word “theoretically” that all the paranormal elements AND interesting speculation come into this story – on both sides.

Some of that is in the circumlocution that the narrator uses to refer to Jolene. At first, we’re pretty sure that the word she’s talking around but not actually saying is ‘whore’. Or possibly either ‘bitch’ or ‘cunt’ or all of the above. It’s only as the story progresses, as they talk on the porch, that the reader realizes that the word that’s being talked around is actually ‘vampire’.

And that the reason they’re having this conversation on the porch is that porches are liminal spaces, neither inside or outside, and that the distinction is important to creatures like Jolene. And, as it turns out, to people like the narrator. Maybe. Possibly. Eventually.

Because Jolene can’t get into the house to get Charlie without permission. Permission that the narrator is not about to give. Ever. At the same time, Jolene doesn’t need permission to get inside the narrator’s head. All she needs is time to talk and a whole lot of experience in getting people to question themselves and everything they thought they knew.

Escape Rating B: This is the last novelette in my Hugo reads. And it’s a very sort of equivocal story to end with. It’s not exactly fantasy, it’s not exactly horror, it’s not exactly the song and it’s not exactly like the story the reader thinks it’s going to be at any point in it. It also doesn’t exactly end. Jolene goes, the narrator stays and Charlie wakes up from his ensorcellment but it doesn’t feel like an ending. Or so I thought on first reading

It felt more like a temporary settling on the original status quo, and a pause while the narrator thinks about whether she’s going to remain content with the small life in the small town with the mostly tolerable husband she mostly keeps afloat through life. Then I reread the beginning and realized it wasn’t.

Either way, the real story doesn’t feel like it’s Jolene stealing Charlie or stealing Charlie’s soul or stealing Charlie’s life essence. It’s about the story she tells that night, a very unreliable narrator explaining how she got to be what she is and that it doesn’t work the way that people think it does. And that the narrator is just as likely to turn out like Jolene someday as Jolene was likely to have been her if her life had been different or if she’d been willing to settle for what other people thought she should be.

From one perspective, this is a feminist take on the story in the song. Jolene didn’t choose to become a vampire, she chose not to settle for the life that society believed she was supposed to have. This is absolutely not a ‘wronged woman’ vs. ‘brazen hussy’ story that pits two women against each other over a man who isn’t worth it. Jolene is just surviving and the narrator is just protecting the life she’s built. In the end, they aren’t enemies, they’re merely two sides of the same coin.

I thought the story was left a bit open-ended, that the narrator had decided one thing in the moment but might – and could – change her mind at some point in the future. The author contacted me to tell me to check the opening line again, and she was right to. Because the opening line does give the ending, but only after you read the whole thing through. Something that’s easy to lose track of in the throes of a good story. Which I did.

In the end, I left this one with mixed feelings. It held my interest while reading, and Jolene’s interpretations of the hows and whys of her kind of vampirism were interesting and a bit different, which was itself good because damn but that’s been done to death – pun definitely intended.

However, the story needs a lot of underlying assumptions about the narrator’s life and choices to make it work. (Also, in the original song she’s so pathetic that I can’t even with that.) A little bit more story, novella length perhaps, would have allowed more room for worldbuilding and a bit less of the song lyrics, resulting in a killer earworm. Your reading mileage may vary.

But now that I’ve finished my reading in this category, I’m left on the horns of a bit of a dilemma in my Hugo ballot. Not about this story, which is going to be well down my ballot, but needing to flip a coin between “Kaiju Agonistes” and “Never Eaten Vegetables” for my top pick. I have less than two weeks left to decide!

A- #BookReview: The Three Coffin Problem by Lavie Tidhar

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews> Short Story Review
A- #BookReview: The Three Coffin Problem by Lavie TidharThe Three Coffin Problem by Lavie Tidhar
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy mystery, historical fantasy, horror, paranormal, vampires
Series: Judge Dee
Pages: 306
Published by Jabberwocky Literary Agency on June 16, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Medieval Europe. A world of darkness. Of Gothic castles, isolated monasteries, of monks and knights and things that go bump in the night. A world where vampires can roam at will... At least, as long as they obey the rules! For a vampire may not murder another vampire. Not unless they have a really good reason to, anyway.
Enter Judge Dee. Ancient. Immortal. Ascetic. His cold intellect draws him wherever a mystery is present, and he will rest at nothing to solve the puzzle. Jonathan, the judge’s human assistant, on the other hand, mostly just wants cheese. With bread, if possible. And some pickles would be nice. After all, it’s not easy spending your life in the company of murderous vampires who only see you as a tasty snack...
Their adventures take them from the warm Italian valleys to the heights of the French Alps as they come face to fang with fiendishly complicated puzzles—not the least of which is love! But as they are drawn inexplicably onwards to London, Jonathan wonders what awaits them when they finally arrive—and what choices he may have to make once they get there.

My Review:

I initially discovered Judge Dee – this version of Judge Dee, at least – when I was looking for references to the original, historical Judge Dee after reading The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan. I was curious about Dee as a historical figure, because the context in which the name was familiar was in relation to the Judge Dee mystery series interpreted and written by Robert van Gulik in the 1950s and 1960s, (very) loosely based on the historical (7th century!) Judge Di Renjie who had migrated into 14th century Chinese mystery fiction and eventually 18th century Chinese crime fiction.

I was not expecting THIS version of Judge Dee. Nor was I expecting the artwork for this version, which is, maybe not unique but certainly quirky and definitely memorable. I definitely didn’t expect the vampire Judge Dee and his supernatural cases – although the paranormal elements may be closer to the original fiction than I initially thought.

I was also not expecting Judge Dee and his human assistant Jonathan to remind me quite so much of DEATH in the Discworld and his frequently hapless human assistant Mort. But that resemblance is definitely there if you look for it.

I read the first of this series of these Judge Dee stories a couple of years ago, found it interesting and every bit as quirky as the artwork. I intended to read the rest of the available stories when I caught the ‘round tuit’ but that hadn’t happened by the time this collection arrived. And then I couldn’t resist and I’m glad I didn’t.

Most of the stories in this collection have been previously published online in Reactor Magazine. A few of the stories were published just long enough ago that they were published at Tor.com before it was officially renamed as Reactor. Same site, different name.

Two stories are new for this collection. IMHO they are among the best in the collection, partly because the worldbuilding has gotten more solid over the series and the individual characters have had more of a chance to develop. However, I think it’s mostly because the new stories are designed to bring what was once a loose collection into something close to a cohesive narrative. And definitely to tie the series up in a neat – if bloody – bow.

I’ve reviewed and rated the stories individually below. Overall, the collection rates as Escape Rating B+ as that’s the center around which the individual ratings revolve. If you’re looking for interesting little ‘bites’ of story that can be read together but not necessarily all at the same time, this collection is a lot of fun.

“The Limits of the Law” c2020 Reactor
Previously reviewed. Escape Rating B

“The Mystery of the Missing Manuscript” c2022 Reactor
Even a vampire is afraid of librarians when he has a long-overdue book to return. The story takes a darker turn when one of his fellow visiting vampires murders not one but two of the librarians at the vampires’ remote research library, all to get access to the books that are so dangerous that they are even forbidden to other vampires. But Judge Dee is, as always, one step ahead of any vampire breaking one of their few but necessary laws – even when that vampire is another judge who should be as dedicated to upholding the law as he is himself. This one was a different kind of fun, not just for its window into vampire libraries and librarians, but also for its portrait of the immortal monster known as Dracula as a much younger and more impetuous vampire. Escape Rating B+ because even vampires understand that libraries are magical in their own right.

“The Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels” c2021 Reactor

This one is interesting because it explains more of the vampiric law that Dee administers so zealously. Like many of Dee’s investigations, it’s a story of misdirection AND a subversion of ordinary mysteries in that the mystery is all about rival claimants to Werdenfels’ death rather than suspects trying to get out of the way of being outed as the murderer. Not that they all didn’t try, but they couldn’t have all succeeded. Escape Rating B

“The Executioner of Epinal” c2024 Reactor

This story represents the point in the series where they stopped being merely individual short stories and developed into a whole with actual character arcs. Which works for the story in this volume but against the older stories that come after it in the internal chronology because the arcs aren’t immediately developed.

That being said, this one is very interesting because we get a much clearer picture of Dee’s long, LONG life, Jonathan is forced to recognize that even an immortal vampire must have been young – and even dumb – once upon a time. It’s also a story where the desire for revenge well outlives the grief of loss and shows just how long and how well a vampire can hold a grudge. Even Jonathan’s character starts getting fleshed out, and he has a bit more to say for himself than just how hungry he is all the time. Escape Rating B+

“The Poisoner of Montmartre” c2021 Reactor

This is the first of now three stories set in Paris, one right after the other. Which allows Jonathan to actually get comfortable in the city – even though he knows that his comfort and something close to happiness are very temporary.

There’s always one case in a mystery series where the ‘detective’ is every bit as much of a suspect as everyone else, and that’s this story. It’s also a story that reflects on Dee’s ancient past. It’s also a drawing room mystery in the spirit of Agatha Christie, even if Dame Agatha hasn’t been born yet. Escape Rating B

“The Children of the Night” c2026 original to this volume

Jonathan can’t figure out what’s keeping Dee in Paris, but Jonathan is there for the plentiful food and warm, comfortable rooms. Dee, on the other hand, seems to be there for the theater and the street musicians. Of course, the Judge is really there because he’s been summoned, and Paris is where his case is.

The case combines Oliver Twist with Interview with the Vampire, as it involves rival street gangs of child vampires fighting over the begging and pickpocketing territories of the rather dark “City of Lights”. Everyone is trying to muscle in on everyone else’s racket, and the result is chaos, gang warfare – and the burning of Paris. (This may have been the fire of 1651). In spite of the light of the fire, this story is darker than many of the others due to the ‘child vampires’, the way they’re treated, the way they live, the way that they are stuck as pawns even though they are every bit as deadly as any vampire of their actual – and not their apparent – age. Escape Rating A-

“Seven Vampires” c2022 Reactor

This story takes place in the immediate aftermath (maybe that should be during-math) of the previous story. Paris is on fire as Dee and Jonathan flee into the night. Of course Dee has made previous arrangements in the event of a needed escape, but not for something as literally combustible as this circumstance.

So it’s not a surprise when his planned flight to England with a group of seven other vampires goes immediately off the non-existent rails. One member of their party was murdered while waiting for the rest, while the rest began dropping like flies – or more like bats shaken out of the sky. It’s obvious to Dee that the murderer is one of the remaining survivors, but it isn’t until they are about to reach the shores of England that Dee finally stages his dramatic reveal. Escape Rating B

“The Locked Coffin” c2023 Reactor

This story takes the classic ‘locked room’ mystery one step further, as the vampire Earl of Maidstone is so paranoid that he has commissioned a coffin that locks from the INSIDE for his daylight slumbers. The Earl has good reason to be paranoid, as it’s clear to Dee that every single member of his household, from his vampire wife to his few surviving drained and oppressed human servants, would be happy to see his end if they could just manage to arrange it. Which someone finally has, in spite of the locked coffin and the locked room it – and its late, unlamented occupant – are resting in.

While Dee and Jonathan perform a double act outlining all the many and various ways that a locked room murder of this type can be accomplished, Dee is peering into every corner and every mind so that he can finally reveal both whodunnit and how it was done in spite of all the precautious.

An interesting take on a classic mystery conundrum. Escape Rating B

“Judge Dee in London” c2026 original to this volume

This final story in the collection, original for this collection along with “Children of the Night”, seems designed to tie the previous stories up into a tidy bow and provide closure for Dee’s adventures as well as suggest a possible way forward – if not two or three.

Dee’s – and Jonathan’s – long journey across Europe has arrived in London. Coincidentally so have the many vampires Dee has met over the previous stories who have managed to survive his judgment. Along with one surprise guest, the vampire Helena that a VERY young Dee loved and lost and mourned back when the Great Library of Alexandria burned to the ground. He believed she was dead, either murdered or left to burn by some of their fellow vampire archivists, but in fact she used the chaos of the fire to get away from Dee. Their relationship was over but he wasn’t willing to accept it.

Her activities in London have finally caught the eye of the Vampire Council, and Dee has arrived in London to pass judgement. However, the cold, unemotional, unflappable Dee is for once too compromised to be objective – at least about his long lost love. He passes plenty of judgement on his remaining colleagues and enemies, judgements that will haunt those that survive for centuries.

Escape Rating A- for the way that this story pulls the originally loose collection together, lampshades several futures for both Dee and Jonathan, while providing an opening for more stories to be told.

#BookReview: For Better or Murder by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: For Better or Murder by Simon R. GreenFor Better or Murder (A Holy Terrors Mystery, 4) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Holy Terrors #4
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on May 5, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

It’s wedding season with a spooky twist! The Holy Terrors are trying to tie the knot while solving a ghostly murder in the latest witty, creeptastic paranormal mystery from
New York Times
 bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green.
There are those who say seagulls cry over the sins of mankind. And that if we could only get our act together, they could stop crying …
Holy Terrors dream team—actress Diana Hunt and her partner in crime (solving) young bishop Alistair Kincaid—are getting married! The plan is to hold a small ceremony with just some family and friends at a charming and secluded hotel in Cornwall. But in true Holy Terrors fashion, the Pale Rider hotel carries the legend of a killer ghost rider and his skeleton horse, which sets the perfect tone for a cheerful occasion!
Trying to make the best out of the stormy weekend and seemingly haunted place, spirits fall even lower when one of the guests is found murdered in the hallway. Did the legendary pale rider strike again or is there something more sinister going on—and will Diana and Alistair finally have the chance to say yes?
The “hugely entertaining” (
Booklist
) Holy Terrors Mysteries are perfect for fans of Simon R. Green’s urban fantasy novels, authors Jim Butcher, Terry Pratchett and Ben Aaronovitch, as well as those who enjoy
American Horror Story
,
The X-Files
, and murder mysteries with a supernatural twist.

My Review:

It feels like this latest book in the Holy Terrors series begins at the end. The Bishop and the Actress, Bishop Alistair Kincaid and actress Diana Hunt, are about to tie the knot. At the end of Which Witch? (the previous book in the series) the Bishop popped the question and the Actress said yes. THE question. They’re getting married.

Which is not nearly as crazy an idea as it would have been if this story had been set back in the early 1900s when that catchphrase was both suggestive AND popular. (The original Saint series by Leslie Charteris used that phrase A LOT and always with the double entendre firmly evident – double entendre intended.)

Alistair and Diana met in the first book, The Holy Terrors, and were dubbed by the press as “The Holy Terrors”, when they filmed a spooky reality TV show that had much too much fake spookiness – along with entirely too many real murders. That first book set up the whole series – and the relationship between Alistair and Diana.

A relationship that, up until AFTER the fade to black at the end of this latest story, hasn’t been nearly as salacious as Diana would like it to be. And it will be once they manage to FINALLY tie that marital knot.

But it’s never that simple when the Holy Terrors are involved. First, there’s the press. Currently, they are media darlings, which has given Diana’s acting career a serious boost. But she’s not interested in the ‘paps’ running or ruining her wedding. So they’ve chosen a venue as far from the madding crowd as they can manage. A remote inn so close to the end of Cornwall that if it were any further out it would fall into the Atlantic Ocean.

Of course, the place is haunted. Or so the proprietors claim. Of course the atmosphere is beyond spooky and Mother Nature seems determined to whip the dramatic pauses and power failures up to eleven. Of course, the wedding party is a motley crew filled with hidden agendas and open resentments.

So when the bodies start dropping, neither Alistair, Diana OR the reader are surprised. But it is still fun to watch Alistair take all of the atmospheric spooky stage setting apart with his bare hands – and his logical mind – one more time.

Escape Rating B-: This reads like it could be the final book in the Holy Terrors series. And that’s probably for the best. (Yes, I know I need to explain that.)

I read this author for the snarkitude. He has always had a great line in dry, wry, intelligent banter, and that’s still true. So I’m not sorry I read this at all.

That being said, the plot is utterly predictable. It’s not just that every story in this series hangs off the same scaffolding, it’s that it’s the same scaffolding as one of the author’s other recent series, the Ishmael Jones series.

The investigators (Alistair and Diana, Ishmael and Penny) find themselves in a situation that is presented as being paranormal or supernatural in origin. Or, at least, someone tries to fool them into thinking it is. But neither Alistair nor Ishmael are fooled – Alistair out of faith and Ismael out of experience. The story is in taking the illusion apart as the bodies drop from human causes out of human motivations.

Ishmael Jones series actually works a little better because there’s an SFnal element in Ishmael’s background that allows some of the ends to be supernatural or extra-terrestrial and have that work. OTOH, Ishmael and Penny can’t really reach a happy ending – for other factors in Ishmael’s origin – but Alistair and Diana can. And quite possibly do at the end of THIS book.

So this turned out to be fun, but only because I was already invested in the series. That fun relies on prior knowledge of the series – while the series as a whole hasn’t been all that compared to the author’s earlier works like Nightside and The Secret Histories.

I also had the feeling, particularly with this last book, that this whole thing relies more than a bit on some particularly British humorous stock characters that I just didn’t have the cultural background for. Or something like that. I had this constant sense that I was just missing some nuance around the edges but didn’t know what it was precisely enough to go hunting for it.

Your reading mileage may vary.

#AudioBookReview: Lightning Runes by Harry Turtledove

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Lightning Runes by Harry TurtledoveLightning Runes (City of Shadows, 2) by Harry Turtledove
Narrator: Paul Boehmer
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: alternate history, fantasy, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: City of Shadows #2
Pages: 354
Length: 13 hours and 8 minutes
Published by Caezik SF & Fantasy, Tantor Media on April 16, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Hardboiled Noir meets Urban Fantasy in a post-WWII Los Angeles where vampires, zombies, and demons are part of the social fabric.

Magic is just another way to get killed in the City of Angels.

Los Angeles, 1940s. The war is over, but the shadows are growing teeth. In this gritty Historical Urban Fantasy, detective work requires more than a badge and a .38. It requires an understanding of the runes that thrum beneath the pavement.

It started with a knock on the door. It usually does. Now there’s a body, a missing musician, and a trail of magic that smells like ozone and bad luck. The LAPD is out of its depth. The "square" world is waking up to a reality they aren't prepared to handle.

My Review:

I picked this up because I fell hard for the first book in the series, Twice as Dead and was hoping for more of the same. That first book managed to combine the hard-boiled, noir-ish sensibilities of down-on-their-luck detectives like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Easy Rawlins with the paranormal world of Dan Shambles into an urban fantasy that mixed the best of the ‘old skool’ of that genre with a bit of paranormal romance and the kind of thoroughgoing alternate world building that the author is famous for.

The City of Shadows that the series is set in is an alternate version of Los Angeles in a slightly skewed version of our own world. A world where all the creatures that go bump in the night – wizards, vampires, werewolves, ghosts and zombies, among others, are a known and sorta/kinda accepted part of society. About as well accepted as any other minority population, but also known to be just as real even if just as looked down upon as any other such group.

We never do find out whether the vampires, etc., came out of the coffin one relatively recent dark night or whether their existence has been accepted all along. We are, however, in a 1940s post-World War II era where the powers lined up more or less the same way but under different names – and with the supernatural fighting on both sides.

Just as in the first book, P.I. Jack Mitchell has several cases on his desk that he’s all too afraid are going to turn out to be one big, nasty mess. And he’s right. The vampire whose Nazi views and aggressive behavior drawing the wrong kind of attention to Vampire Village, the werewolf stalking the streets on full moon nights, the mob involvement in the record business AND the blackmail of the queer, black owners of the best jazz club in town shouldn’t have anything to do with each other. But Jack’s luck doesn’t work that way.

He knows they’ll be connected, if only to make his life that much more difficult and in that much more peril. All he has to do is keep his own skin in one piece long enough to unwind all the tangled threads of the case before they can tie him down or burn him out – again – and this time for good.

Escape Rating B: The cover of Lightning Runes sums up my mixed feelings a whole lot better than I ever expected. First, vampire Dora Urban wouldn’t be caught alive, unalive or dead in that dress or with that ridiculous expression on her face. Even after centuries – or more – as a vampire she’s still too much of an aristocrat for either. Meanwhile, there’s something wrong, like uncanny valley wrong or human bodies don’t quite work that way wrong, with the man standing in for Jack Mitchell. The story was like that too for me, a sense of ‘almost but not quite’ right – or at least not quite as good as the first book.

I really wanted to love this one because Twice as Dead was just so good. Parts of this WERE good. The cases were fascinating, the way that they came together took dogged investigation and a bit of luck and the way that Jack teased around all the edges of everything until the pieces started coming together was compelling. The way that Jack gathered more friends around him than he ever thought he’d have to get the job done was terrific.

But, and it’s a fairly big but, the pace slowed down every single time that Jack either got lost in his memories or got pulled down inside his own head in his totally righteous resentment of the way that the US of his 1940s – and ours – did not live up to the image it had of itself as the land of the free, the home of the brave, where all men are created equal.

Because he knows first-hand it’s not true. Jack is mixed-race, able to ‘pass’ in either direction. He sees the way the corrupt LAPD pull over men just a shade darker than himself for beatdowns in plain sight that people just pretend isn’t happening right before their eyes. He knows it could be him.

In the wake of their version of World War II, Jack still gets nightmares about his service during the war, even as he’s thinking about where he would have ended up if he hadn’t passed and wondering whether it would have been safer AND less scarring to be with the black troops or whether he’d just have a different set of scars.

While the many Jews in his neighborhood, and among his friends, remind him that there are people who have it WAY worse than he ever did – and that it’s all wrong and doesn’t look like it’s going to get righted anytime soon – if at all.

All of the above is, well, real. Very real. And it’s equally realistic that Jack thinks about all of it, gets reminded of the war all too often because he’s still fighting it in his head, hates the new ‘restricted’ neighborhoods – restricted to white people only, no nonwhites, no Jews allowed in spite of the laws against such restrictions – and seethes about all of it. That the villain this time around is his world’s equivalent of an SS officer who seems to be hell-bent on resurrecting his ‘Leader’s’ plans and policies in the US – if not the actual bastard himself – continuously pokes Mitchell’s wounds and resentments throughout the entire story.

The issue, as far as the book is concerned, is that it pulls the reader out of the story every time Jack goes down into these dark trenches, and he does it a LOT. I both sympathized and empathized with him every single time, but it either happened too often or went too deep and too far and too much.

Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in ‘The Maltese Falcon’

After all of Jack’s internal angst, the ending was a bit anticlimactic – and a bit of a deus ex machina. It was also a lot of fun, a popping of a huge balloon of tense anticipation with the lolloping of a ginormous shaggy dog. But as fun and funny as it was while it was happening, it was almost forgettable after the dark depths of the case itself. Your reading mileage may vary.

Or listening mileage, as the story lends itself well to audio with its first-person protagonist, very much in the Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe talking to himself and breaking the fourth wall kind of way. That being said, I kept waffling between thinking that Jack Mitchell didn’t sound as much like Spade or Marlowe as he thought he did or that the narrator didn’t sound quite as much like portrayals of Spade or Marlowe as I thought he ought to have. Your listening mileage may seriously vary on that one, especially as it may just be that Humphrey Bogart cast such a long, gravelly shadow as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon that it’s STILL impossible to shake.

In the end, I have to say that I liked this rather than loved it the way I did Twice as Dead. But I liked it more than enough to want to see it continue. I also need to find out how Jack’s office cats, Old Man Mose and Mehitabel are doing – and what they’re doing to destroy Jack’s office even more!

A- #BookReview: The Shop on Hidden Lane by Jayne Ann Krentz

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Shop on Hidden Lane by Jayne Ann KrentzThe Shop on Hidden Lane by Jayne Ann Krentz
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, romantic suspense
Series: Psychic Dogs #1
Pages: 336
Published by Berkley on January 6, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz dives into an enthralling new romantic suspense novel filled with deeply entrenched grudges, psychic dangers, and a conspiracy that threatens not only two families but also the entire paranormal community.
The Harper and the Wells families have regarded each other with deep suspicion for four generations. The Harpers have been known to offer their psychic talents for less-than-legal purposes, and the powerful Wells clan has a reputation for playing both sides of the street. But for all the years of history and distrust between them, there is a mysterious pact binding the two. They share the responsibility for protecting a long-buried and very dangerous secret.
Sophy Harper and Luke Wells are shocked to learn that her aunt and his uncle have been sleeping together—and now they are both missing. Not only that, but the last traces of them are at the scene of a murder soaked in negative paranormal energy. Clearly, someone is willing to kill to obtain the secret their families have been charged with protecting. Despite their mutual distrust, which, as far as Sophy is concerned extends to Luke’s hellhound of a dog, they both know that the terms of the pact must be honored.
Their investigation uncovers a psychic trail leading to a bizarre desert art colony where nothing is as it seems. But Luke and Sophy are concealing a few secrets, too. By a strange twist of fate, a Harper and a Wells have no choice but to trust each other and the fierce attraction that is binding them as surely as the pact between the families.

My Review:

The little shop on Hidden Lane in tiny Mirror Lake looks like a bit of a tourist trap for those who believe in the weird reputation of the town and the surrounding area. And it kind of is, but that’s not the business that keeps the lights on. Bea Harper makes her reputation performing paranormal investigations for the people who KNOW that it’s all real because they’re part of it.

Not believe, but KNOW. Because they, or their parents or grandparents, lived within the sphere of influence and/or fallout of one or more secret government labs that were playing with technology they REALLY didn’t understand. And everyone near ground zero for the secret Bluestone labs developed a ‘little something extra’ that changed them – and their descendants.

Just like the experiments that members of the centuries old Arcane Society played around with when they discovered that they and their descendants had psychic powers – for REAL.

It’s a fascinating idea, and makes a great set-up for a long-running series that reads like it steps right alongside the X-Files or any other TV series that claims “the truth is out there”. Because in this case it absolutely is.

But Bea Harper is missing, and so is Deke Wells, her romantic partner/frenemy – it’s complicated. Bea’s niece Sophy and Deke’s nephew Luke were surprised by the discovery of that relationship because the Harpers and the Wells have been feuding since the previous century.

The society of the paranormally gifted is a small world, and the Harpers and the Wells are on opposite sides of that world in every possible way. Which clearly didn’t stop Bea and Deke from falling for each other.

And doesn’t look like it’s going to stop Sophy and Luke either. They just have to survive the mess that their feuding families have gotten them all into. All they need is a little bit of help from Luke’s ‘hellhound’ Bruce to help them win the day and close down the clandestine project that set their families at loggerheads – for good, this time. Or at least for a while.

Because Bruce has secrets of his own, and they’re going to need all the help they can get to figure THAT mess out. Hopefully soon because Bruce steals the show in The Shop on Hidden Lane and he deserves a happy and safe happy ever after of his very own – and so do all of his brothers and sisters!

Escape Rating A-: I picked this FIRST over the holidays because, as much as I’ve been looking forward to several books this first full week of the new year, the Jayneverse was the place I most wanted to dive into to start. Even when the story is set in the here and now – admittedly a here and now in which the X-Files would be both right at home and absolutely true – it has just that hint of a future beyond our wildest dreams.

The author has already dreamed that future, as this is part of long-running, multi-faceted, sometimes multifarious series that began – historically – with the Victorian Era set Arcane Society in Second Sight (written under her Amanda Quick penname), continues through the 20th and 21st centuries (written like this book as Jayne Ann Krentz) into our present in stories like White Lies, The Vanishing, and Sleep No More, then continues into the far-off, far flung future on the lost Earth colony Harmony (written as Jayne Castle) with After Dark.

The fun of this fantastic, fascinating, interconnected series is that every single book is a starting point. You don’t have to begin at the beginning – although they are ALL terrific and you will want to – and you don’t have to remember the details of everything that went before because each book gives enough background to get you stuck right in wherever and whenever you are. That being said, this book is currently a bit of a standalone, although it’s clear there are more coming, making The Shop on Hidden Lane a great place to being a new exploration of this interconnected series.

As well as brand-new situations and characters to fall utterly in love with. Of which the scene-stealing Bruce is a prime example.

At its heart – and does it ever have one – the story in The Shop on Hidden Lane combines paranormal romance with romantic suspense. The suspense part is where the multiple facets and nefarious villains come in – along with the threads of the rest of the marvelously tangled Jayneverse.

The idea that the government conducted secret experiments and then tried to cover everything up isn’t all that fictional. These particular experiments into the paranormal (most likely) are, but history tells us this sort of thing did happen, particularly in regard to the Manhattan Project in WW2 and the production of nuclear power afterwards. (If you want a REAL chill, read Then Came the Summer Snow by Trisha Pritikin about the towns that lived in the shadow of nuclear production and were continually exposed to toxic radiation out of fear that telling the locals to take some simple precautions would let the enemy know how much nuclear material was being produced – more than a decade after the war was over.)

The idea that the government didn’t keep track of everyone and especially everything after they shut the projects down after multiple disasters also doesn’t seem all that far-fetched either, which is what grounds this series in the real. (That the techbro who got caught up in this particular branch of villainy and chicanery reads a LOT like the fictional version of a real-life techbro just made the whole thing that much more plausible. Also more fun.)

So the concept feels real, which makes the action and danger feel equally plausible even though the villains are a bit on the cartoon supervillain side. Then again, cartoon supervillains play with exactly the same kind of tech so it STILL works.

I loved that Bea and Deke found THEIR HEA even though we don’t see their romance. The amount of time they’ve been (secretly) involved also helps to balance out the instalove between their respective niblings, Sophy and Luke, which happens so fast and furiously hot that even the participants acknowledge it’s awfully fast although they are both deeply committed by the end of this FOUR DAY adrenaline race.

But it works anyway. Perhaps because Bruce is both their protector AND their guardian angel. Or guardian hellhound, which honestly they need quite a bit more, considering the dangerous mess they’ve gotten themselves into.

While it’s going to be a while before I get Bruce’s story, I’ll be back in the Jayneverse, on Harmony this time, with Enter the Nightmare, coming in June (cover TBD). But I’m REALLY looking forward to Bruce’s story, because the teaser we got for THAT was fantastic, in multiple senses of the word!

Grade A #BookReview: Turns of Fate by Anne Bishop

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Turns of Fate by Anne BishopTurns of Fate (Isle of Wyrd, #1) by Anne Bishop
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Isle of Wyrd #1
Pages: 528
Published by Ace on November 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A young detective investigating crimes of the uncanny will learn that bargains can change your fate—for good or ill—in this darkly enthralling fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of the Others and the Black Jewels series.
Words have power. Intentions matter.
Most people come to Destiny Park for entertainment. They come to have their cards read to tell them a bit about their future. They come to walk through a beautiful park and to eat at the hotel’s restaurant. They come in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Arcana, the paranormal beings who rule the Isle of Wyrd.
But some people come to make a bargain with the Arcana—to change their fate. And some people come for dark purposes.
When Detective Beth Fahey is sent to Destiny Park to inquire about a “ghost gun,” she will begin a strange journey on which she must learn to navigate the Arcana’s unforgiving laws and dangerous attractions. Her search will draw her into seemingly impossible cases and the secrets of her own past as tensions rise between the Arcana and their human neighbors across the river.
For the Isle of Wyrd is a place where the dead ride trains to their final destinations, predators literally become prey, and seekers’ true natures are revealed in the ripples of destiny unknowingly stirred in their wakes.
Who will live? Who will die? And who will be lost in between?

My Review:

“The humans fear what they do not understand,” a truism from a book I read a very long time ago. Which does not make the statement any less true, or any less applicable to the Isle of Wyrd or this story.

The title of this first entry in the Isle of Wyrd series is the point where the above comment connects with this particular story, because the Isle is all about fate and change and human attempts to fight or flee one or the other. That the humans who come to the Isle and ignore the instructions and caveats are responsible for whatever happens to them is a HUGE part of what is feared and not understood.

Some people just plain expect to control their environment and everyone around them. On the Isle of Wyrd they explicitly do not – or at least do not in the way that they usually understand control.

Sometimes fate, like karma, is a bitch and someone needs to get off the road they are on. And some people can’t recognize that the fate that has befallen them has been all their fault – and of their own choice – all along.

The story begins with one human police detective, a woman who has always been drawn to stories and particularly images of the wild, the weird, and the macabre. It is Detective Beth Fahey’s first day on the job at Precinct 13 in Penwych, just across the Fate River from the Isle of Wyrd.

Beth feels like she has come home, even though she’s never really had one of those, and she’s never been to the area before. On her first trip across the Fate River to the Isle, the powers that be on the Isle, the Arcana, recognize that she has come home – to them – even if neither they nor she understand why or how that is.

Her police colleagues feel the Arcana’s acceptance of Beth in their own bones, in a way that begins her separation from them – and their distrust and resentment of her for it. An attitude that spills out all around them, filled with consequences for everyone on both sides of the river.

Those consequences are going to be deadly for many on the human side of the river. Just because the humans can’t control anything on the Wyrd side, doesn’t mean that the Wyrd side can’t cross over to deliver the fate that quite a few aren’t able to admit they’ve earned.

While the Arcana make sure that Beth, one of their own in spite of the years and the distance she had to travel to get there, doesn’t suffer any further from the fear and the hatred of those humans who absolutely refuse to understand.

Escape Rating A: I’ve been saying for years that somehow there is ‘reading crack’ between the pages of Anne Bishop’s work. Because as soon as I open one of her books, I feel compelled to finish as fast as possible. Somehow, this remains true in spite of reading ebooks, leaving no physical means of embedding that ‘reading crack’. It must be magic, because I read this in a single day.

The world of the Arcana reminds me a LOT of the author’s World of the Others, which I adored. And which also drove me a bit bonkers in some of the same ways. Specifically, I can’t help but wonder whether the garden-variety humans of either world would be quite so much like us if humanity evolved on a world where humans were not and had never been the apex predators.

But it was easy to set that quibble aside and just dive right into this story – because of Beth Fahey. At the beginning, she’s just as lost as we are. She may be drawn to stories of the weird and the uncanny, but she hasn’t experienced those worlds. She loves fantasy art and always has, in spite of a guardian screaming at her that she was going to Hell for that love.

She’s become a police detective to investigate mysteries because her own background is one. Her parents either died or left her behind, she was raised by a guardian who was no relation to her and who never seems to have officially taken charge of her in any way and yet it was allowed. There’s a hole in her background – and her heart – that can’t be filled.

At least, not until she crosses the Fate River and meets the Arcana.

But Beth herself has multiple mysteries to solve – all of which are rooted in the Isle of Wyrd. There’s the mystery of her own origins. The mystery of a pack of missing high school boys who are the architects of their own fate – not that the human towns see it that way. There are also several cases of missing people who escaped TO the Isle in order to escape fates that they had NOT brought upon themselves.

And in the middle of those mysteries, magical and mundane (or at least mundane-ish) alike, there’s the mystery of who and what the Arcana ARE, what they are capable of, and just how much control they have over the fates of themselves and the humans that surround them. And how much responsibility humans can be made or forced to take for their own behavior – and their own fates.

I’m looking forward to learning more of Beth’s fate – and the fates of the Isle of Wyrd and the people of the surrounding towns – in the next book in this series. A book that I hope will be announced SOON because I already need another fix!

A- #AudioBookReview: Ushers by Joe Hill

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews> Short Story Review
A- #AudioBookReview: Ushers by Joe HillUshers by Joe Hill
Narrator: Leon Nixon
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, paranormal, short stories, thriller
Pages: 29
Length: 56 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

A young man who has improbably escaped death twice reveals his secret in a spine-tingling short story by New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill.
Martin Lorensen is a twenty-three-year-old counselor for disturbed teenagers. He’s bright, compassionate, attractive, and outgoing. He’s also—and this is the most interesting thing—not dead. Martin has improbably survived not one but two deadly disasters that claimed dozens of lives. The kid is riding one hell of a lucky streak. Two federal agents think there is something darker at play. Now that they’ve arranged to interview Martin, they want answers. Martin is ready to share everything he knows. One thing is for certain: when it comes to escaping death, luck doesn’t figure into it at all.

My Review:

There are plenty of stories about trying to ‘cheat’ death by attempting to subvert a prophecy. These stories don’t even have to be speculative fiction in any way whatsoever.

After all, Oedipus’ tragedy has been told and retold for more than two millennia at this point. Not centuries, millennia. Since approximately 400 B.C.E. While it’s a bit more famous these days for the psychological concept of the Oedipus Complex, the story that leads to the complex is a result of Oedipus’ father trying to subvert a prophecy.

Ushers isn’t quite like that – not in the sense that it’s about attempting to subvert a prophecy, but in the sense that it’s about death coming for us all, literally, and that even if someone does their damndest to save a particular person, death will still have their due.

In this particular story that old, familiar idea is mixed with something a whole lot newer, because at first it seems as if the story is straight out of the X-Files. A young man has managed to get himself out of the way of death. Twice. And it makes the cops, or at least two particular cops, extremely suspicious.

Especially that second time around, when he convinced someone else to get themselves out of the way as well.

Special Agents Duvall and Oates don’t find ANY of Martin Lorensen’s jokes and misdirections funny – not even the ones about their names. They’re pretty sure he didn’t commit any crimes in regards to his near brushes with death – but they are both damn certain he’s hiding SOMETHING.

As good cops do, they can’t resist poking and prodding at Lorensen to get the answer. Or what Lorensen believes is the answer. An answer that no cop could possibly accept. At least not until that answer comes for them.

Because death does, indeed, come for us all. With a quota that has to be filled – one way or another.

Escape Rating A-: This wasn’t exactly I was looking for. OTOH, it was very much what I was looking for as I was searching for a short audiobook on a Friday. I didn’t want to start something longer knowing it would likely be three days until I got back to it – and this caught my eye and here we are.

The narrator, Leon Nixon, did a terrific job with the characters. As there are only three, it was VERY easy to distinguish the voice and mannerisms between the three, and the audio was just the right length for the time I had available. Also, this is part of the Amazon Originals Collection and was free as part of Kindle Unlimited. A win all the way around for this reader/listener.

At first, the story reminded me a LOT of a police procedural. It certainly has that format, two cops interviewing a person of interest who might be a suspect. But the vibe for that was just a bit ‘off’. Not that the story wasn’t well done, but rather that even at the outset Martin Lorensen is an unlikely suspect at best. Even though it seems like both Duvall and Oates are playing ‘bad cop’ and there’s no actual ‘good cop’ in sight.

Although at least Duvall is trying. It’s just that Martin Lorensen is very trying from his perspective and he’s having a hard time holding back his irritation.

Still, the events that Lorensen managed to escape are wildly different, and the cops actually know what happened in both cases. But still, the idea that Lorensen left his high school just minutes before a school shooter opened fire AND walked away from a prepaid first class train ticket just an hour or so before the train derailed is a bit outside the odds – even though the events are YEARS apart.

Like being hit by lightning twice in one lifetime. Or rather, NOT being hit by lightning twice in one lifetime. Or both.

The case felt like something straight out of the X-Files, but also mixed with a very old SFnal short story. Specifically, Robert A. Heinlein’s first published story, all the way back in 1939, “Life-Line”. (No, I’m not THAT old, I read it in his Expanded Universe collection several decades later. I still have the paperback to prove it!)

“Life-Line” is the story of a man who can precisely predict anyone’s death. Ushers isn’t quite that, but it also isn’t NOT that. Lorensen doesn’t predict death, but he does see it coming. And the effect is every bit as creepy as that early story – and very much vice-versa.

I tend to shy away from outright horror stories, so the author was someone I knew about but hadn’t read. After listening to Ushers, that’s going to change, because this story was right on that edge of creepy, tiptoeing towards horror by implication, that I really enjoy when I’m in the right mood for it.

Which I most definitely was!

#BookReview: The Late-Night Witches by Auralee Wallace

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C- Reviews
#BookReview: The Late-Night Witches by Auralee WallaceThe Late-Night Witches by Auralee Wallace
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, paranormal, witches
Pages: 400
Published by Ace on August 19, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

An enchantingly warm and funny novel about family, love lost and found, discovering who you are, and how difficult it is to slay a vampire from the beloved national bestselling author of the TikTok sensation In the Company of Witches.

Cassie Beckett’s life is anything but magical. With a wild younger sister, three unruly kids, and an absent husband, she’s really not looking forward to the witching month of October. At least the gorgeous, foggy Prince Edward Island is always quiet.

That is, until the vampires arrive.

As the creatures sink their teeth into Cassie’s tenuous grip on normalcy, she’s forced to come face-to-face with long–disregarded family secrets. The legacy gifts her with power, but also a lofty rid the island of vampires, or let them win. (Both options suck, in more ways than one.)

Armed with her family, newfound friends, and a baby in a spectacularly garlicky onesie, Cassie must learn what it is to be a witch and how to fight for what she loves before time runs out. Because on Halloween night, the stakes will be higher than ever before...and it’s up to Cassie to finish what the witches that came generations before her started.

My Review:

Cassie Beckett’s life seems to be mired in an endless number of quagmires – or in a seemingly epic number of terrible situations, at least some of which should be under her control. Except possibly the incipient invasion of all-too-real vampires this particular Halloween.

The Burrow, her tiny neighborhood on slightly less tiny Prince Edward Island, is normally a very quiet little place. Or at least as far as Cassie has ever known. But Cassie’s family has a secret and a legacy, and it’s coming for her.

In the undead person of “The Maker of Shadows, the Begetter of Demons, the Deliverer of Fear, Sorrow and Death,” that her feckless, irresponsible, wild child sister nicknames ‘Del’ because his whole title is simply ridiculous. Which is true – even though he has big plans to, well, deliver on all the threats his name implies. After all, he’s been waiting centuries to finally take out his one and only impediment to world domination and endless feeding.

That would be the ‘Thirteenth’ Witch of her generation of the Beckett family. Meaning Cassie. Who doesn’t believe in any of this witchcraft business or the powerful magical legacy that she is supposed to be heir to. Because she’s too beaten down by cleaning up after her sister Eliza’s many, many crazy mistakes and wild outbursts, along with taking care of her three children and pretending that her husband will someday return from his latest hitch with Doctors Without Borders. An absence she can’t even manage to protest because a) he’s being a hero after all and b) that’s not what she does.

She just lays down and sucks it up when her life piles more and more crap on her.

But Del is coming, whether Cassie believes in either her witchcraft or his legend or not. So she’s just going to have to ‘witch up’ and deal with the apocalypse heading her way. Ready or not.

Definitely not.

Escape Rating C-: The blurb for this story just sounded so appealing, I went into it with high hopes and left with a great deal of disappointment. To the point where I’m having a difficult time figuring out what to say because I’m just so deeply bummed by the whole thing.

The idea was a good one – which isn’t really a surprise because it’s been done before – and better. If you loved any of the following: What We Sacrifice for Magic, Witchlore, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, The Crescent Moon Tearoom, Direct Descendant, Practical Magic and especially if you have fond memories of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you’ll recognize a ton of familiar elements in The Late Night Witches. Starting with, as many of these do, the concept of a powerful magical legacy that the protagonist has no clue about at the start because it’s been kept from her in one way or another.

But what makes all of those stories work is that their protagonist – or protagonists in some cases – are active and not passive characters. They may not all start out magical, but they do start out trying. Even if in a few cases they are very trying indeed. Even if they’re not old enough to adult, they’re still pro-active enough to be, well, protagonist-ing. (That needs to be a word.)

Cassie Beckett is a doormat. She has taken on the responsibility for everyone and everything that is remotely adjacent to her own life, and just lets it all pile on until she’s pretty much crushed pretty much all of the time.

I’m not talking at all about her kids. She’s doing the best she can – and it’s pretty damn good – but she’s exhausted. I’m talking about her younger sister, who is also an adult, but who expects Cassie to fix her ginormous and expensive mistakes and to rescue her from all her terrible decisions – and then turns around and complains that Cassie doesn’t do anything for herself.

Cassie’s husband has eff-ed off to Doctors Without Borders, which is yes, a noble thing, but he’s left Cassie holding the bag at home and barely even bothers to check in let alone provide support. While she’s just holding on and hanging on and pretending it’s not happening.

When the vampires rise and Cassie’s extremely eccentric aunt comes back into her life to tell her that it’s all about her, Cassie’s pretty damn skeptical. That she does witch up and deal with the mess she’s inherited does lead to plenty of Buffy-style training montages and to what’s left of the family coming together and exploring their heritage, but the reader has to wade through a lot of crap scuffed off on Cassie-the-doormat before we finally get to the good stuff THREE QUARTERS of the way through.

This could have been a really terrific and fun story. There are certainly elements of that story in that last quarter. But it takes too damn long to get there.

I’m not sure whether to hope your reading mileage varies or not.

#BookReview: Which Witch? by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Which Witch? by Simon R. GreenWhich Witch? (Holy Terrors Mystery, #3) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Holy Terrors #3
Pages: 203
Published by Severn House on August 5, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Talented actress Diana and young bishop Alistair, her partner in crime-solving and supernatural sleuthing, face the terrifying curse of the Scottish Play in this witty, creeptastic paranormal mystery from New York Times bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green

Miles away from town or city, and centuries away from civilization, three witches dance around a great brass cauldron, singing songs of horror and hatred. The Crone raises her voice to ‘When shall we three meet again?’ . . . only for the cauldron to emit a thick, poisonous smoke, sending her, and her fellow actresses, fleeing for their lives.

For the director, it’s the last straw. Macbeth is famously a cursed play, but the incident, not the first in a long line of creepy events, makes him wonder if someone – or something – is trying to sabotage the play. The show must go on! But not if the forces of darkness are determined for it not to.

Talented actress Diana Hunt, hired to give her Lady Macbeth, knows just the man to turn to for her partner in crime-solving, handsome young bishop Alistair Kincaid, whose help investigating a series of seemingly supernatural murders has earned them the nickname the Holy Terrors. But with evil and black magic wrapping the theatre in darkness, this investigation might cost Alistair and Diana far more than they’re expecting.

My Review:

There’s a curse on ‘The Scottish Play’, or so the old acting tradition goes. Part of that curse is that if any of the actors in the play utter the play’s actual title, that the production will be doomed. It’s possible that tradition arose because The Tragedy of Macbeth has the potential to be a rather expensive play to put on, and a lot of theaters that did so went out of business because they were already in financial trouble and hoping that a splashy production would rescue them.

Or it could all be the witches’ fault. There are certainly plenty of them in any production of Macbeth.

The production of Macbeth that ‘the Actress’ half of the ‘Holy Terrors’ is rehearsing seems to already be covered in the curse from every possible angle even before her partner-in-solving-crimes, ‘the Bishop’, gets called in.

The theater they’re rehearsing in may not technically be haunted, but it’s been derelict for so long that it might as well be. It’s certainly falling apart around the actors’ ears. There have been a series of spooky, mildly dangerous, plausibly supernatural events amid the rehearsals from the very first day.

Neither the director nor the money men seem willing to take those events seriously, but Diana Hunt, ‘the Actress’, certainly is. So she calls in Bishop Alistair Kincaid, her very own Bish. At least she wants him to be.

Hers, that is.

Not that anyone can blame her – although a few people do – for wanting his stalwart presence at her side, because there’s something terribly wrong in the wings of this old theater. So far in their adventures, the spooky and the supernatural have turned out to all be matters of misdirection and human agency, but there’s a first time for everything.

And even if there’s not, the Holy Terrors have an excellent record of finding their way to the truth – no matter how much fog – or fire – or at least smoke – gets in their eyes.

Escape Rating B: I read this author for the tone of his voice – particularly his excellent line in snark – and this latest book was no exception. What makes this series especially fun is that the Bishop and the Actress give excellent banter. The series – at least so far – rides on the coattails of their obvious attraction to each other to the point where their every interaction hints at both the double entendre of old “the Bishop said to the Actress” jokes AND the will they/won’t they? of their relationship.

So I sunk right into this third entry in the series – after The Holy Terrors and Stone Certainty – because I was having a grand time just listening to the two of them talk to each other and egg each other on. For this reader, that’s the best part of the story.

But there is also a mystery. Based on their prior outings, I was pretty sure at the outset that whatever was going on in that awful theater was awfulness of the entirely human  – and living – variety. Not that someone wasn’t using the creepy atmosphere to further their aims, but that those aims were entirely among the living and so was the perpetrator – or perpetrators.

Like those previous books, this one does a terrific job in poking holes at something we’re already familiar with that affords plenty of opportunity for some sort of woo-woo trickery to ooze right into everyone’s subconscious. In The Holy Terrors it was reality TV, Stone Certainty featured a stone circle, while this time around its the shenanigans and superstitions of an acting troupe. The internal squabbles of this intimate group of frenemies certainly added to the rising tide of red herrings in solving the mystery.

In the end, this turned out to be a bit of Noises Off set backstage of the creepiest play to ever creep in a haunted theater filled with backstabbing personalities on all sides. I came into this one expecting to be entertained – possibly more than any audience this production might ever have – and that’s exactly what I got.

I was not expecting there to be a supernatural element in the actual mystery – and there wasn’t. The hint of the supernatural that the story did have was JUST the right touch.

What I did hope for was to see a bit of how the UST between the Bishop and the Actress was – or was not – going to resolve. I left the story thinking that they believe it did – but I’m not certain at all that it will work out. We’ll see whether it does for the book or the characters – or possibly but not likely both – if/when the series continues. Because this could be the end – but I kind of hope it isn’t.

A+ #BookReview: Twice as Dead by Harry Turtledove

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Twice as Dead by Harry TurtledoveTwice as Dead (City of Shadows #1) by Harry Turtledove
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: alternate history, fantasy, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: City of Shadows #1
Pages: 341
Published by Caezik SF & Fantasy on March 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
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Rudolf Sebestyen is missing, and Marianne Smalls is involved in an illicit affair with the shady Jonas Schmitt. Both cases converge when Dora Urban, Rudolf’s beautiful and mysterious half-sister, and Lamont Smalls, Marianne’s suspicious husband, hire Jack Mitchell, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking private investigator. Dora wants Jack to uncover what happened to her brother, while Lamont seeks proof of his wife’s infidelity.
But Dora is a vampire, in a city teeming with creatures of the night.
As Jack dives deeper, he discovers that both cases are linked to vepratoga—a dangerous new drug spreading through Los Angeles. Twice as Dead is brimming with vampires, wizards, zombies and zombie dealers, the Central Avenue jazz scene, an exclusive after-hours club, adultery, a New England ghost who prefers Southern California’s warmer clime, corrupt cops and politicians, spying rats, and a smart-mouthed talking cat.
When Jack’s home is burned to the ground, the strands of his investigations culminate in a showdown at a tire factory, where even the reliefs on the walls are not what they seem. In this unique noirish urban fantasy set in postwar Los Angeles, Jack finds more adventure, danger, and romance than he ever imagined—and learns that success may come at too high a price.

My Review:

The story begins the way all the best hard-boiled, noir stories begin, with a private detective in his down-at-heel and behind-on-rent office in the less salubrious part of town waiting for either the phone to ring, for someone to knock at the door, or for his willpower to resist the bottle in his desk drawer to run dry. Only one of those three is ever a frequent occurrence.

The knock on the door is followed by the entrance of a mysterious woman with a sob story, a need for his professional services and a whole lot of secrets she’s not planning to share unless she has to. He knows she’s likely to be more trouble than she’s worth – in more ways than one – but he can’t resist her siren song OR the temptation of the mystery she represents.

The ‘real’ Angels Flight, Los Angeles, CA 1955

It’s an opening straight out of Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep)  or Easy Rawlins (Devil in a Blue Dress), but this isn’t exactly our Los Angeles. Welcome to the City of Shadows, where the government is corrupt, the police are on the take, zombies clean the streets, vampires have their own neighborhood in the midst of the city districts filled with other so-called marginal populations and there’s a new drug on the streets that can even get the undead higher than the literal Angel’s Flight over Bunker Hill.

A real angel, an angel who has been ferrying passengers up that hill on his own wings since LONG before the Spanish missionaries were brought to meet him.

Private investigator Jack Mitchell might finally become solvent if the three cases that arrive at his door all get solved and all pay their bills – as rare as that combination has been in Jack’s experience. Lamont Small’s wife is having an affair. Clarice Jethroe’s husband is missing. So is Dora Urban’s half-brother.

Initially, the only thing the three cases have in common is that law enforcement isn’t going to help and any other PI is going to show these potential clients the door without listening to them. Lamont Smalls and Clarice Jethroe – and their respective spouses – are black. Dora Urban is a vampire, and so is her half brother.

Jack Mitchell, mixed-race enough to ‘pass’ in either direction, and all too aware of who ‘sees’ him, who doesn’t and what it means to walk that narrow line, is their only hope.

If one of the three cases doesn’t get him killed before, or after, they intersect. Unless Dora bleeds him dry first.

Escape Rating A+: I wasn’t expecting this at all. I wasn’t expecting Twice as Dead to be SO DAMN GOOD. I really wasn’t expecting a story that reads like the very best ‘Old Skool’ urban fantasy with a protagonist who could have hung out with Philip Marlowe, Easy Rawlins or Dan Shamble (Death Warmed Over) with ease even though Mitchell would be wondering the whole time whether Marlowe and Rawlins would see him for who he was (Rawlins almost certainly yes, Marlowe maybe not) while zombie PI Shamble would have creeped Mitchell out down to the bone.

I expected to like this. I like urban fantasy very much, and you just don’t see a lot of it these days, especially urban fantasy that doesn’t fall over the line into paranormal romance. Which this doesn’t, if only because Dora Urban doesn’t believe that vampires are capable of the feeling.

In fact, the one and only complaint I have with this book is the cover. It’s really cheesy, and Dora Urban wouldn’t be caught dead – pardon me, as a vampire she would say finished – in that get up. She’s way classier than that. And this book deserves something better.

What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with this story from beginning to end, setting, characters, mystery, alternate history, and absolutely ALL, even more than Mitchell thinks he’s fallen for Dora.

Then again, he’s quite possibly going to discover that he’s been a complete fool in a later book in this series – while I’m certainly NOT. This was GOOD. Downright EXCELLENT. If the subsequent books live up to this series opener I’m going to be one very happy reader.

(In case you can’t tell, I’m having a difficult time getting to the meat of this thing because I had such a good time with it. Everything keeps turning to ‘SQUEE!’)

I’m not sure whether what first dragged me so deeply into this story was the characters or the setting. Actually I do know the first thing. Mitchell talks to his cat, Old Man Mose – and Mose talks back. I got teased by the question of whether Mose was really talking or whether Mitchell was putting words in his mouth – as people who are owned by cats often do.

Because that question led immediately to two others – just how magical is this alternate post-WW2 Los Angeles, followed by the question about how big those alternatives are and in exactly what ways.

And then there’s Mitchell himself, who is so very much in the Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe/Easy Rawlins hard-boiled detective mode, but with the nod to Marlowe and Rawlins because they both operated in our LA during the same time period that Mitchell does in his.

The cases Mitchell is confronted with combine the classics – a missing husband, a cheating wife, a missing brother who was clearly mixed up in something illegal and might have deserved whatever happened to him – which his sister doesn’t want to reveal because she knows damn well that he probably had it coming.

Then it spirals out into the differences. Two of his clients are black, and both his clients and himself acknowledge that the color of their skin means that they can only get help from one of their own, and that reaching out to the cops will only bring more trouble. While vampire Dora knows the cops don’t want to deal with her kind any more than she wants to deal with theirs – and that whatever her brother was in up to his neck was both ill-advised and illegal. Of course, trouble finds all of them anyway or this story wouldn’t exist.

Downtown Los Angeles ca 1950

What captivated me was the careful way in which this both was and was not Los Angeles as our own history knew it. At first, the reader believes they can place this story in time as well as location. It’s five years after the war in which Mitchell served. And that war was analogous to World War II, but it wasn’t exactly the same and is never called that, and neither were the opposing forces ever referred to as Nazis, but rather a name that translates to swastika. And they had sorcerers on their side. But then, so did the Allies.

There are other references that let the reader feel comfortable that this is post-World War II, but jazz musicians ‘Bird’ and ‘Lady Day’ are never referred to by their full names as we know them. So they might be, they might not exactly be, and we might or might not be further down the other leg of the trousers of time than we thought.

(I expected this part of the story to be marvelous because alternate history is what this author is award-winningly famous for. I just wasn’t expecting to see this depth of craft in a story that many will assume is ‘light’ entertainment. And I should have. If you are interested in alternate history and haven’t read Harry Turtledove, go forth and begin immediately because he’s awesome at it whether you agree with the choices he makes or not.)

I just settled in for the marvelous ride as Mitchell starts out with those seemingly common cases that in the best hard-boiled mystery fashion slowly congealed into a single case. An investigation that zigzagged from robbery to illicit drugs to dangerous magical experiments and landed in the machinations of an evil corporation secretly controlled by ancient gods who resorted to the most arcane method possible to silence any inconvenient enemies.

Considering how much trouble Mitchell is making for them, it’s a fate that he fears for himself and all his friends and associates – including the cat! – unless he can put together the right crew to fight back, not with knives and bullets – but on the magical plane.

Twice as Dead is the first book in the City of Shadows series, so clearly someone gets out of this story alive. Or at least, not dead. Or in the same state they went into it, if not a bit better. But the ending is just as clearly the start of something that goes with no good deed being unpunished, and this reader absolutely cannot wait to find out what that punishment is going to be.