2025 supernatural mystery in modern Edinburgh, fourteenth in Oswald's
Inspector McLean series. DCI McLean is tapped to keep the billionaire
happy by adding some rank to the investigation of a trivial break-in
at a research lab under construction. Meanwhile DI Harrison chases
down a casual labourer who's gone missing…
I think Oswald may be trying to walk a line between being too
fantasy-complicated for the mystery readers and too mundane for the
fantasy readers. If you've enjoyed the series thus far, I'd recommend
skipping the first chapter, which I felt gave far too much information
about what would be going on, something I'd have enjoyed rather more
if I'd found it out during the course of the book. That said, I read a
great deal of SF (and fantasy, when I can find it) in which working
out what is going on is a key part of the enjoyment of the story.
Still, while both cases suffer from people clearly not telling all
that they know, the investigative threads that gradually link them
together are satisfying. Perhaps it's unreasonable for McLean and
Harrison, in particular, still to regard magic as fakery and flim-flam
after some of the things they have experienced, but only a slight
change in emphasis would allow the reader to view it as performative
disbelief so as not to impede their police careers, while privately
treating their magical encounters with the deadly seriousness they
deserve.
Is it a little lightweight, compared with For Our Sins? Perhaps. Or
perhaps that was just the introductory chapter giving me a head start
on the supernatural aspect of the mystery.
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