Roy Scherer and Suzie Miller run a detective agency.
Though their clients are a little different from what you see in the usual Film
Noir. They’re hunting the werewolves, resolving the hauntings, dealing with
angry spirits and tripping over the odd vampire
Well, usually. It doesn’t always go to plan. Usually it
doesn’t. But with copious alcohol and few resources, who else are you going to
call?
I can see what this book is trying to be. It’s trying to
be a zany, funny collection of irreverent short stories, taking the grittiness
of so many hunter stories we have out there and throwing in a heavy dose of the
silly, sarcasm and general hilarity to make it a whole new thing. Still a
little dark, with the heavy drinking protagonists and more than a few jokes,
but comedic and silly – the slightly inept hunters flailing through a series of
encounters with monsters and leaving (sort of) success and hilarity in their
wake
I’ve seen this attempted before in other books – and I’ve
utterly loved it. The horror and the humour, the grittiness and the silliness
it can mesh so well and has literally created some of my favourite stories.
But… in this case it didn’t really achieve that. Mainly
because I simply didn’t find it funny enough. I mean it was amusing and had
moments of laughter, but there were nuggets within a story that as a bit meh.
The thing is, without the hilarious quips and fun, this kind of story falls
flat because there’s not much else there really to sell it
There is a story behind there. The origin story of Roy and him working for Miller,
Suzie‘s father who then joined the firm. The two of them coming together, him
resenting her, grudgingly starting to respect her and them moving their way
down to romanceville. And I really loved how Suzie went from naive ingénue
harder than Roy by the end. But this plot line and the world (which is more a
series of random encounters than a world) aren’t really there for their own
sake. I don’t think the author intends me to be super invested in these
characters any more than I’m supposed to be super invested in characters from a
comedy sketch. Nor do I think I’m meant to marvel at the world. These characters
and this world is supposed to provide a good framework, a decent backlot,
against which the hilarity can happen. But there isn’t enough hilarity so I’m
left looking at the backlot a bit too much which is… fine, I guess. I mean, it’s
not bad but not enough to sell it on its own.
