2019 urban fantasy, second of its series. Lydia Crow is working as a
private investigator, trying to hide her magical abilities from people
who'd take advantage of them. But in between following potentially
erring spouses, she can't resist looking into someone found hanging
under Blackfriars Bridge.
Looking ahead at the titles, the first four books in this series
appear each to deal with one of London's old magical families, all now
fallen on hard times as power has drained away, though Silver at least
has its secret weapons (and I assume the others do too). But in
mundane terms, this investigation gets into a bit of high finance and
really has more to say about all people who simply assume that they
can have what they want than it does about magical examples of the
type.
But there's very little progress… in anything really. By the end of
it, Lydia's where she was at the beginning: hiding her magical ability
from her family, avoiding getting too involved with her cop boyfriend
even though they're great together and he's developing magic of his
own, taking grunt-work cases to try to build up a rep as an
investigator, not hanging around with her old school friend as much as
she might want to.
Which would be fine if this were an endless series like Doc Savage,
but it isn't; there are eight books, and to my mind that isn't really
enough room for interchangeable series entries.
I like Lydia and I like the writing in general, but for me this had
little to add to the enjoyment I had from the first book.