Captured (Fallen Siren Series #0.5) by S.J. Harper

We join Emma and Zach on the first case they worked on together – a string of dead children and another boy who appears to fit the pattern has gone missing

A child is in danger – FBI agents Emma and Zach need to find him and save him.

I was actually surprised that I liked this book. The supernatural elements are really light throughout, we have an introduction in the beginning and the conclusion is much more leavened by it, but most of the book could happily have been replaced by two humans in a non-supernatural world and the plot would have kept working. Normally that would put me off – but this really worked.

I think it worked because the very essence of the frustration and the fear of looking for a lost, possibly dead, child really came through. The leads they chase that go nowhere, the desperation for any clue, the need to go back over old ground again and again and again and constantly hitting dead ends and false leads. There’s no real eureka moments, and the woo-woo can only get you so far, can only help you so much. Most of it is slog, reading the notes, questioning the witnesses, questioning them again, and again, going back over the files again, chasing up every tiny possibility – endless slog

That doesn’t sound appealing – but it is. It’s very real and really well written to convey all this slog with added frustration and fear over the stakes and the heavy emotion of the grieving, angry families who, yes, do lash out and are falling apart and often aren’t facing any kind of happy ending.

And, ultimately, it’s the slog that pays off. Not the woo-woo (though it helps), but doggedly going back over the ground until a connection is found. I like it, I like that magic isn’t used as an excuse to replace investigation or ignore investigation or completely render the gruelling slog of police work completely irrelevant. It means the characters are still professionals who are doing their jobs well BECAUSE they can do their job well and are willing to work hard and go the distance – not just because they have woo-woo and can just show up and spill powers everywhere and call the job done.

The book is prequel short story – picking up on events alluded to in Cursed. It’s not necessary to read the main plot line (I think), but it does add some context to that often mentioned first meeting between them which fills in a lot of the background.

There’s sexual tension thoughout the book, but Emma is also an extreme professional – which I appreciate a lot. After all, a child is missing, other children are dead, time out for a roll in the hay is not what the mission calls for. Not only that, but she’s very good at setting boundaries with Zack and repeatedly telling him when he steps out of line and treats her as a date or an attractive woman rather than a police partner. She doesn’t need him to hold her chair for her at dinner, she doesn’t need him to tip the staff at the hotel for her. She’s very clear every time he treats her differently than if she were a male FBI agent – she’s not his date, she’s a fellow professional, he needs to step back

Of course, sex still happens at the end, we knew it would since it was mentioned in Cursed, and it doesn’t get in the way of the plot.

I also like how Emma feels the need to speak out about misogynist language Zach uses against another woman – and they don’t allow the fact that woman IS an awful person be sufficient reason to let it slide. Yes, she’s awful, yes, she’s mean. No, that doesn’t mean “bitch” is going to be used. In a genre that has a lot of female characters willing to cut any other women dead around them, I appreciate it when it’s avoided EVEN WHEN a lot of readers would be happy to put down the language as “deserved.”

The novella has some minor racial inclusion - there’s a Latino character and a Black man, neither hold major roles though.

I think Captured manages to hit the ideal for a novella for me. It has enough information and development to actually inform and add to the greater series, while at the same time not being so essential that someone reading the series really has to have read the novella – since many people (myself included) often skip the short stories in a series. It was a nice balance to hit, it’s worth reading, but you don’t have to. But, personally, I’d highly recommend you do.

Cursed (Fallen Siren Series #1) by S.J. Harper

Emma is a siren, banished from Olympus by Demeter for failing to keep Persephone safe, she now must seek redemption by saving kidnapped women and girls as an FBI agent if she is to ever have any hope of returning to Olympus. And in the meantime she must avoid any romantic entanglements or risk Demeter’s spite

Which makes her new partner, Zach, who she previously had a fling with, very complicated indeed. Especially since he’s a werewolf with a difficult past and fleeing political turmoil in his pack.

But emotions aside the job calls, people are going missing, people without any apparent connection between them – it’s their job to find them, preferably alive.

The story and world are definitely appealing – Emma is a cursed Siren and we have a wonderful new take on Siren mythology (especially since siren mythology is one of those that has several different versions). Emma’s quest for redemption, without any real confidence of ever being redeemed, is a powerful one – but not one that eats up the story with angst. She seeks redemption so she gets on with her job – she’s not happy with Demeter but she isn’t going to curl up into a sobbing ball for pages of how miserable she is, but at the same time her sadness, frustration and despair is apparent.

The book is a police procedural and I know that has been done a lot in Urban Fantasy – but it works. It works because it is actually a police procedural with the law and detective work and channels and procedures to follow. “Detective” isn’t a job just used as a title to justify why the woo-woo character happens to be involved in the latest case, it actually means something. Which in turn leads to the story being compelling as Emma and Zach hunt down leads, follow up possibles actually have to interview people and work and chase dead ends and generally do police work.

It’s got a wide world that has only been hinted at but already leaves me eager for more – the different werewolf packs and politics from that, the vampire kings and their own politics. With lovely extra twists like the vampires not wanting to reveal themselves to humans because they distrust the humanity of humanity! Because human exploitation, arrogance and cruelty is such that they think it wiser to hide from them – I love that twist.

When it comes to romance there’s usually a lot of tropes going on that give me headaches – but this managed to navigate them well, much to my happy surprise.

Firstly, there’s no love at first sight or love at first woo-woo – there’s attraction that grows into more and there’s also history between them. Just the fact they have been together before, that they know each other, that they’ve worked together gives a foundation on which that attraction and emotion can actually be built upon rather than just racing to the “rawr, sexy times!”

Broken Homes (Rivers of London #4) by Ben Aaronovitch

Peter and Lesley are still trying to track down the Faceless Man and his erstwhile pupils; it’s a long, tedious task only achievable by dogged police work.

Of course, the understaffed magical police force has plenty of other things to drag their attention – an ancient magical book that a thief tried to sell, a man committing a very suspicious suicide, people being microwaved, a Russian military trained witch and the gods and goddesses of the Thames demanding their attention. And some of it is definitely linked to a bemusing tower block that doesn’t quite make sense

There’s a lot to handle – and the Faceless Man’s influence is definitely behind some of it – but which and why?

Nightingale insists the Faceless man is no Moriarty – but he may be wrong on this one

When a copy of this book was pushed through my door on Friday evening, I opened it then cleared my desk, dropped my e-reader and turned off my phone. There would be no interruptions. When the sun rose Saturday morning, I had finished reading it – and could finally allow myself to sleep

It’s an excellent sign of a good book – does it rob me of sleep? Can I read all 357 pages of it without any breaks? And, particularly, can I read it in one setting and not even take a break to get coffee? The answer to all is yes, I love this book more than coffee.

There’s so much about this book I love. I love its realness – which sounds strange about a book that is about the supernatural, but it’s true. I love the sense of London you get from every page, the very real place that it conjures, the actual real place that it relates to. You can feel London – and intimate knowledge of London - on every page. I can’t undersell how powerful the setting is.

But the realness doesn’t just stop at the city, there’s also a lot of research that has gone into Peter’s job as a policeman. The procedures, the bodies he deals with, the hoops he has to jump through. His wry views of both the public through a policeman’s eyes and the same wry criticism of the police’s own failings both historic and present (especially as a Black man who grew up in a poor neighbourhood). When so many crime stories have magical forensics, impossibly fast deductions, so little actual investigation and police work and such a very fast and loose approach to what the law actually means, it’s so excellent that this Urban Fantasy book has a more realistic presentation of police work than any number of crime dramas. My personal favourite was replacing the jurisdictional battles (“it’s my case! How dare you steal my case!”) with police forces trying to push cases on each other because they can see how much budget it’s going to eat up.

Beauty and the Beast, Season 1, Episode 2: Proceed with Caution

We open with the crime, a woman walking down an alley looking for a party, when a body falls off the roof in front of her. At the same time Catherine’s providing a non-sequiter voice over about lines and being a detective, rules, protocol, good guys and bad guys. Don’t pay much attention, it’s not actually relevant to anything that follows.

At Catherine’s home, she’s joined with her little sister, Heather, who is living with her now. But she’s a little disturbed by the big box of “files about our mother’s death” Catherine keeps lying around – and the murder board. She wants Catherine to move on, perhaps let go, especially when she starst questioning Heather about how their mother was acting before she died. Catherine’s distracted from the “let it go speech” by one of her mother’s research documents.

To the beast warehouse, breaking through the fence, she enters the warehouse and is attacked by JT. There’s a brief altercation that JT easily loses, but he still has a rant – they’ve managed to stay off the grid for 9 years and now she keeps drawing attention to them – she needs to leave them alone. She gives him her mother’s research, says it’s about DNA but her mother was a doctor for infectious diseases, it could be related to Muirfield. She then gets a call – much to JT’s dismay that she brought a mobile phone into their hide out – about the crime scene.

To the dead body for some flirting with Evan, the pathologist after which Tess urges them to just do it already and get done with it – though Catherine doesn’t want to be another notch on Evan’s belt and mocks Tess back for her “men cleanse”. Meet up with and snark with Joe, their boss and see the victim – Gemma, a ballerina, 22 who works for the ballet company that is run out of the building she fell from. They’re interrupted by Victoria Hanson who runs in crying about Gemma – she’s a friend and an understudy for her. Since she fell of a big building Catherine and Tess have to ask her how she was feeling, any change of demeanour and Victoria says Gemma was stressed – she’s dancing as Odette in Swan Lake and was struggling with it.

Evan, meanwhile, believes Gemma has defensive injuries and she fell too far into the street – so probably not an accident. Tess and Catherine go to sweep the building, finding the theatre and a room where the music is still playing where Gemma was practicing. Catherine separates from Tess to go to the roof – with a huge number of cigarettes stubbed out – and is grabbed by Vincent who is irritated by her dropping in on his warehouse. He says her mother’s research is for curing a fever and has nothing to do with Muirfield. He tells her he only told her that the killers were tracking her mother so Catherine would stop blaming herself, not for her to go investigate them. It’s too dangerous to be involved with Muirfield. To which Catherine responds with “aha! Muirfield had something to do with my mother’s death!” Uh-huh, selective hearing at its best. Before leaving he tells her that his super-duper-senses noticed Victoria was lying.

Back to Evan (more flirting) where he finds that the cut in Gemma’s scalp matches a hair pin but not the one they found (no blood on it). They also found that while she was on the roof where people gathered to smoke, Gemma wasn’t a smoker. And there was powder on hands that could be make up. Tess and Catherine think this points to another woman and, after some research, find that understudy Victoria played Odette in last year’s production – it looks like she was demoted.

Off to the theatre where they notice Victoria is Odette again. They talk to Bertrand, the artistic director who tells them money’s far too tight for them to cancel the performance. He also rejects that Victoria and Gemma were competitive, they were like sisters – and Victoria wasn’t demoted. She left for a year with a broken toe, when she’s fully recovered, she would go back to being Odette, everyone knew that Gemma was only a temporary replacement.  They check Gemma’s locker and find it completely empty – when it’s normally over flowing. They also find fresh flowers in the bin – tess points out the only time she throws away fresh flowers is when they’re from someone she doesn’t like. Touching the flowers, they get powder on their hands – lily pollen. Which flirty Evan confirms is what’s on Gemma’s fingers – and that she has the morning after pill in her system.

Catherine’s next step is obvious to the top secret warehouse where she has been told not to go! She lurks outside until Vincent hears her and invites her in. She promises she’s here about the case not her mother. They discuss the case briefly but Vincent has nothing to add – and she quickly gets to her mother, how the obsession consumes her and how she looks at old photographs of herself and she doesn’t even recognise herself any more. JT drops in to tell Vincent how risky this is, how she puts them at risk and also how Vincent’s last relationship apparently went south. He brushes Jt off and returns to Catherine with his own photo – of him and the fellow soldiers in the Muirfield programme, and how he barely recognises them either. He discusses the men in the picture who are all dead and she decides with her police resources she can investigate, she can expose Muirfield and shut them down, she can get justice for the victims! Vincent tells her Muirfield monitors everything and would just destroy her – and as for her mother’s case, all he knows is the men who killed her were from Muirfield, now leave it alone and go.

Except she doesn’t of course.

Beauty and the Beast, Season 1, Episode 1

  In a flashback to 2003 we have Catherine Chandler, the protagonist, working in a bar, clearing things up, saying goodbye to her friend, lamenting the practice tests she has waiting for her at home – nicely setting up who she is. She gets in her car to drive home – and it won’t start, she has to call her mother for help. She comes running and we get to see that they’re very close.

Then a car drives up and out get 2 men with guns. Catherine’s mother tells her to get in the car – and the men shoot her mother. Catherine runs, the men chasing her through the woods until she trips and falls, hitting her head and stunning herself. They pause dramatically over her prone form while she begs – and then something leaps out of the wood, a man who roars and growls and claws. Through fuzzy eyes she looks up and sees a man with a bestial face and yellow eyes.

The voice over kicks in – everyone told her that she imagined what she saw, that it was a wolf or a coyote because of her concussion and PTSD and she believed them

Cut to the present day New York and she’s a homicide detective with relationship difficulties with Zeke, her boyfriend, who has issues with her job and he has a new girlfriend, since she didn’t get his break up text. Yes, text - classy man. She gets security to frisk him for having cannabis as some measure of revenge.

From there she’s called to a murder where she gets to talk about the bad men she dates with Tess Vargas, her partner. There’s a body in a hotel, a woman with most her stuff stolen but an expensive handbag left behind. They talk to their boss, Joe Bishop, confirming that the dead woman was a fashion editor for a fashion magazine and her husband, Alex Webster, is a well known fashion photographer. And they have finger prints from a button.

At the station they get a hit on the print – Vincent Keller, no prior crimes, he’s a military doctor – and is listed as having died in Afghanistan in 2002. They pull up his file, all family is also listed as dead – and Catherine zones out looking at his picture. She comes to her senses when Tess grabs her to go to the hospital where he worked before he joined the military.

At the hospital they learned that Vincent joined the military after 9/11, he largely kept to himself – but that he did have a room-mate, JT Thorbes. They track him to an abandoned building. He is living there, having converted part of the place into an apartment to live in (messily) and he also thinks Vincent is dead – and that he has no reason to fake his death. But while they’re there someone watches them from upstairs, hiding. Catherine wants to look around but JT claims he has a class to teach and he’s leaving. When they leave he goes upstairs to see Vincent who is hiding, demanding to know what he did. Vincent shows him an old newspaper about Catherine being rescued as a teenager from a beast and says “that was her.”