Small Change by Andrez Bergen

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.

Strange Magic (Yancy Lazarus #1) by James A Hunter

Yancy Lazerus, wizard, rambler, rogue, musician has lived a long, exciting life and now wants to spend his time eating good ribs and listening to good Blues. But his bleeding heart would never let him stay quiet when people are in trouble – especially when his oldest friend Greg calls him to deal with demons ripping apart people.

Of course, even if he could ignore his conscious – he can’t ignore the fact he has been framed for the deaths and there are a lot of angry men with guns who want to shoot him in the head.

I really like this world setting. It’s a classic every-supernatural-there-ever-is all squashed in, so I won’t say it’s inherently original, but it has original twists. It feels very Dresden Files with just a little more gritty thrown in. With such a wide array of creatures to call upon, Strange Magic has gone in a generally different direction – the beings of the Hub and the creatures from Hindu mythology are not things I’ve seen very often before.

I also quite like the idea of the Hub, again, it’s not entirely something I haven’t seen before, but this gritty melting pot has a lot of potential and interesting additions to the story. On top of this, we got a lot of nicely detailed world building and description that screams of books and books of notes that really makes both the magic system and the magical world seem very rich and fully fleshed out – I like that a lot

This world has immense potential.

And Yancy runs through this world in a rather wonderful Noir investigation. Through gritty and grim Blues bars in the real world to equally gritty bars in the Hub – the world is shown to great advantage with the story taking us to many parts of it and revealing lots of aspects of it along the way. It has the building blocks to being an excellent supernatural Noir story. But there’s some problems that hold it back from that excellence

The first of which is Yancy is supposed to be 60 and look about 40. I don’t really believe this – his voice, his dialogue, his mind set all makes me think teenager or, at very best, early 20s. It’s not entirely a bad voice for someone who is that young – and a young wizard running around snarking away with this much banter and even childishness would be kind of fun. But he isn’t a wizard in his early 20s – nor would the characterisation be solid enough for that.

One Death at a Time (Twelve Stakes #1) by Thomas M Hewlett

Jack was a cop in life – a dirty cop up to his eyes in corruption and booze. Until he became a vampire and started to fight a new addiction.

He’s back in LA, his hometown, no working as a detective and a damn good one with his enhanced sense of smell. But even that almost fails him when trying to find the killer of a popular Councilman and a prostitute.

Driven by a promise from the poor girl’s parents, Jack investigates – and uncovers a drug plot full of betrayal, death, fae and werewolves… and an ancient order of vampires who are interested in him

This books is a supernatural detective story set in LA and it’s positively dripping in Film Noir feel. Film Noir – the hard boiled detective, the glorious monologues, the gritty, dark city – is usually something I adore completely or hate beyond reason. It all depends on whether the author can pull it off

And I didn’t hate this one.

It works. It really works. It works even more with the vampire – world weary detective who has seen it all, been there and has very little to hope for while drinking too much and trying to conceal the last shred of hope within his cynical, harsh mask? It’s done perfectly with extra impact of this detective being a vampire who has seen it all for decades – and not always been on the side of right and good. His cynicism is mixed with a lot of guilt and a lot of regret all delivered in those excellent Film Noir monologues which should be long winded but manage not to be.

Or maybe I just have a sneaking love of Film Noir.

The character doesn’t just fit the setting, but Jack is an excellent character all round. He has history, he has depth, he has development, he has weaknesses and problems all of which are written into the story. He has strength but isn’t massively overpowered and plays a difficult game often with forces that are greater than him – but he’s still a vampire and has the power that comes with that.

The book also looks unflinchingly at a lot of things – like police and government corruption – and notes that the victims of that corruption are so often POC; there’s a few references to how racial dynamic shapes the city and interactions. As well as some excellent, sharp, lampooning of faux liberals and gesture politics. We have an entire family of Latino fae (they’re also involved in crime – but so is everyone in this. It’s Film Noir, Gritty with capital GRIT) in high office which is very unusual. The ME who is more than what she seems and definitely smart enough to put together the clues and discover the supernatural bodies on her slab is a Black woman.

Unfortunately, while there are some excellent female characters who are strong, smart, savvy and up to their necks in the action (and just a little corrupt – did I mention Gritty Film Noir?) there’s also that old thread of female victimhood that permeates the book. I don’t think anyone who resembles a major female character has a good ending in this book. There are also no LGBT people, but there are some anti-gay slurs; I’ve said it before – if you’re going to erase GBLT people at least have the decency to remove the homophobia as well.