Author: Simon R. Green

#BookReview: Buried Memories by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Buried Memories by Simon R. GreenBuried Memories (Ishmael Jones, #10) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ishmael Jones #10
Pages: 219
Published by Severn House on October 25, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


Returning to the small town where he crash-landed in 1963, Ishmael Jones is in search of answers. But his investigation is de-railed by a brutal murder.

"I think something very bad and very dangerous has come to your little town, Inspector . . ."
As long-buried memories from his hidden past begin to resurface, Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny feel compelled to return to the small country town where Ishmael crash-landed in 1963; the place where his memories began.
Norton Hedley is no ordinary town. Apparitions, sudden disappearances, sightings of unusual beasts: for centuries, the place has been plagued by a series of inexplicable events. Ishmael's first task is to track down local author Vincent Smith, the one man he believes may have some answers.
Ishmael and Penny aren't the only ones seeking the mysterious Mr Smith. When their search unearths a newly-dead body in the local mortuary - a body that's definitely not supposed to be there - Ishmael becomes the prime suspect in the ensuing murder investigation. His only hope of discovering the truth about his origins lies in exposing a ruthless killer.

My Review:

Ishmael Jones is as he has always been. The problem is that he’s been the same, absolutely unaging, for 60 years now. And he doesn’t remember who – or more likely what – he was before that. Before 1963, when his alien space ship was blown out of the sky over Earth and crashed in a field near the tiny village of Norton Hedley.

Which doesn’t seem to have changed much either in the intervening 60 years.

A situation that is quite a bit more worrying than Ishmael’s own unchanging face, because he at least knows why THAT’s happening. Or not, as the case may be.

But Norton Hedley, a place where people come and go and live in hope for a good tourist season every year, seems to be a haven for the uncanny. After all, that’s what has brought Ishmael and his partner Penny to the village.

Because Ishmael and his unchanging appearance began – at least as far as his memory goes – with the crash landing of his alien spacecraft in the woods surrounding Norton Hedley in 1963. He’s returned because his previous two cases, Night Train to Murder and The House on Widows Hill, have provided him with some scattered but ominous clues about who and what he used to be.

And he needs to know. Because he needs to know if he’s a danger to Penny. Or anyone else on Earth who doesn’t deserve it.

In his research about Norton Hedley, or the research the coyly named black ops group, the Organisation, has done on his behalf, he – and they – have learned that Norton Hedley has been weird central for years. Not just the years since his ship crashed in 1963, but for centuries. Millenia even.

Something in, on, or more likely under – like the thing that was under The House on Widows Hill – has been creeping its creepy way along into the lifeblood of the town for eons uncounting. It might have the answers he’s been searching for for decades.

And it might not want to let him know.

Escape Rating B: This series has been one of my Halloween reads since I first discovered it, so it seemed appropriate to finish it up this Halloween. As I’ve already read the final book in the series (so far), I’ll have to pick something else horror-adjacent next year.

The author is an acquired taste – one that I acquired decades ago. It’s the snark. It’s always been the snark no matter what the ostensible genre or subject of ANY of his many series might be. If you like his voice, then when you’re in that mood nothing else will do. But if you’re not, you bounce off, and bounce hard. Your reading mileage may vary.

The concept of this particular series throws a whole bunch of speculative fiction tropes into one hell of a blender. The series began, back in The Dark Side of the Road, as English country house mysteries where the supernatural agencies turn out to be merely human – but with a touch of the paranormal or extraterrestrial for spice and added bodies.

Over the course of the series it has turned into Ishmael’s quest to learn enough about who or what he used to be to figure out just how he can continue to stay one step ahead of all the various secret agencies that would like to use him up in one way or another. Even more important, he’s thoroughly invested in keeping Penny safe – if necessary from himself.

At first, what made this series work as well as it does – at least for this reader – was the revelation in each case that no matter how weird things got – often very – that the enemies were always human after all.

What has kept me going this far have been the questions about Ishmael’s past and Penny’s future. While Ishmael has been unchanging for 60 years, the series has been set in a sort of ‘perpetual now’. Days and weeks pass but seemingly not years. This entry in the series is one of the first that confronts head on the problem of Ishmael and Penny’s relationship.

Not that they have problems, but that together they have a problem. Penny is an ordinary human, she will age, and Ishmael will not. Short of a deus ex machina – and not that there haven’t been plenty of powerful machina around over the course of the series – this can’t end happily. Howsomever, I already know that it does not end in the next book, Haunted by the Past. And in spite of the ominousness of that title, it doesn’t dive nearly as deeply into Ishmael’s past as Night Train to Murder, The House on Widows Hill and Buried Memories have done.

So, I have begun to wonder if the author is planning to end this series at all. I wonder even more whether or not he should. I’d rather just think of Ishmael and Penny in that perpetual now, continuing on their quest to find evil humans at the heart of supernatural hoaxes, raging together against the dying of their light.

#BookReview: Where is Anybody? by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Where is Anybody? by Simon R. GreenWhere is Anybody? (Gideon Sable, #5) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Gideon Sable #5
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on August 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Legendary master thief and conman Gideon Sable must pull off an impossible heist to save his partner's life in this fast-paced supernatural thriller from New York Times bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green

Gideon Sable specializes in stealing the kind of things that can't usually be stolen. But these days the legendary master thief is officially retired from the caper game. Now, instead of pulling off elaborate heists with his crew of supernatural specialists, he runs a magical shop in the heart of London with his partner Annie Anybody. Still, he can't resist occasionally going out in the night to steal things when Annie's not looking. For old times' sake - and for the joy of the con.

But after one of his late-night illicit jaunts, Gideon returns to the shop to find that while he's been stealing, someone else has been hard at work . . . stealing from him. I have taken Annie Anybody, reads the note on the countertop. If you ever want to see her again, you must find and steal Time's Arrow. You have forty-eight hours.

Stealing the legendary Arrow isn't a challenge; it's certain death. But Gideon will stop at nothing to save Annie from their unknown enemy - with or without the help of his talented, terrifying former crew . . .

My Review:

Gideon Sable is a lot of things – thief, rogue, collector, jack of all slightly nefarious trades and a master of several of them – more than he admits but then he likes to be underestimated. It’s all part of the game, after all.

But he’s been trying to go straight – or as straight as anyone can who operates in Old Soho – after the events of Not of This World. But it’s not working for him. He misses the thrill of the hunt – and the curiosities and oddities store he inherited always needs more stock.

He may have sorta/kinda convinced himself that’s that’s enough to justify all of his occasional illegal forays into other people’s collections  – particularly as he only steals from people – and creatures – who really, really deserve it. But his partner, Annie Anybody, can always see right through him.

She always wears someone else’s face, so it’s easy for her to spot that her partner is wearing a mask of contentment that doesn’t quite fit. Gideon may always be ‘the man with a plan’ but this time Annie has a plan of her very own – and it’s much, much better than Gideon’s.

All he has to do is get the old gang back together – or at least as together as some of them can ever be – and ride to Annie’s rescue. Because Annie’s been kidnapped by one of Gideon’s many, many old enemies – and he’ll do anything to get her back. No matter how many impossibly well-guarded collections he has to burgle to save the love of his life.

But no plan – not even Gideon’s – survives first contact, especially when that enemy already knows all of Gideon’s tricks. As Annie’s kidnapper most definitely and absolutely does.

Escape Rating B: If the TV series Leverage had a book baby with the author’s own Nightside series the result would be Gideon Sable. Gideon is a liar, a thief, and a con artist, much like Nate Ford in Leverage – who is also ‘a man with a plan’. But Gideon, even though he usually operates outside the law and against the powers that be, only operates against villains who are much worse than he has any intention of ever being – even if those he considers fair game often represent that law OR are themselves among the powers-that-be. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Gideon Sable is right there waiting for some of them to step over a line that sometimes only he can see.

But he’s not really Gideon Sable. Or rather he IS Sable now but he hasn’t always been. In Old Soho, the mask and moniker of Gideon Sable belongs to whoever can steal it and keep it. In the first book in the series, The Best Thing You Can Steal, he had just assumed that identity – whoever he used to be.

This story, which looks like the final book in the series, reads like a bit of a victory lap for the character – in spite of his desperation to save Annie and enact some serious justice on whoever took her from him.

Along the way, first he has to get the old gang back together – and every single one of them needs help before they are available to help him. Even old friends and enemies manage to pop onstage for a brief moment and fans of the series will enjoy seeing most of them again – even the ones that Gideon himself would prefer to drop into a pit lined with spikes or vipers or both.

One of the things that has made this series work for me is that Gideon is a stream-of-consciousness snarkmaster of the first order and we see everything from inside his wry, cynical, sarcastic head. If you like his voice, you’ll enjoy the series – and probably most of the author’s other series – because the style is the same throughout and his worlds tend to bleed into one another – often literally.

Just don’t attempt to start here. It would be like reading the last chapter of a book before the first – before anything that’s going on in the ending has enough backstory to make sense. But all the books in the series are just barely above novella length, so if you like a lot of sass and snark in your protagonists then Gideon Sable might be your jam.

It certainly has been mine, and I’m sad that this series seems to be ending. At least I still have a few of his Ishmael Jones series left to read for when I next need some high quality snarcasm!

A- #BookReview: The House on Widows Hill by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The House on Widows Hill by Simon R. GreenThe House on Widows Hill (Ishmael Jones #9) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ishmael Jones #9
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on July 2, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


Ishmael Jones investigates a haunted house . . . but is haunted by his own past in the latest of this quirky paranormal mystery series.

"That house is a bad place. Bad things happen there . . ."
Set high on top of Widows Hill, Harrow House has remained empty for years. Now, on behalf of an anonymous prospective buyer, Ishmael and Penny are spending a night there in order to investigate the rumours of strange lights, mysterious voices, unexplained disappearances, and establish whether the house is really haunted.
What really happened at Harrow House all those years ago? Joined by a celebrity psychic, a professional ghost-hunter, a local historian and a newspaper reporter, it becomes clear that each member of 'Team Ghost' has their own pet theory as to the cause of the alleged haunting. But when one of the group suddenly drops dead with no obvious cause, Ishmael realizes that if he can find out how and why the victim died, he will have the key to solving the mystery.

My Review:

The House on Widows Hill is more of a twist on the typical English country house mystery than even Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny Belcourt usually have to contend with.

And that’s definitely saying something about the cases that the mysterious “Organization” usually assigns to this unconventional pair – even after the case in the previous book, Night Train to Murder, that has literally just dropped them off in Bath when this investigation begins.

Someone high up in that secretive, blacker-than-black-ops ‘Organization’ wants Ishmael and Penny to spend the night at that house on Widows Hill overlooking the city, a house with a reputation so dark that not only has no one lived there since the Victorian Era, but no one even goes near the place.

The place is so creepy that not even the local kids go there on dares, and haven’t for decades. Probably because of the overwhelming sense of impending doom and dread that comes over anyone and everyone who approaches the outer gates.

Someone in the ‘Organization’ is considering buying the place – or that’s what Ishmael and Penny are told, anyway. That night is a ‘one-night-only’ invitation to not just Ishmael and Penny as representatives of the potential buyer, but also to a whole team of “ghost botherers” (as Ishmael calls them) who have been begging – for years it seems – to get inside the old haunt. Along with one intrepid reporter who represents the family that owns the creepy pile – and really would like to get shed of the place once and for all.

The rumor is that the house is haunted – but there have never been any reports of actual ghost sightings. At least not until the first member of the little group of wannabe ghost hunters dies in the midst of what Ishmael is sure is a fraudulent séance. Then again, Ishmael believes that all séances are fraudulent so he’s not disappointed that this one is all a wheeze – although he is peeved that he let himself get caught up in the distraction.

He just wasn’t expecting this particular bit of shenanigans to be a way of covering up murder. But he should have been, even if he’s a bit off his usual game. Because while there may not be any ghosts in the house, there certainly is a real something. Something that’s speaking to Ishmael himself in ways that seem entirely too familiar – even if they are speaking of a past that he can no longer claim as his own.

Escape Rating A-: I normally save this series for around Halloween, but I’m in the midst of a reading quandary that I hoped this book would solve – or at least beat back for a couple of days. I’m in the middle of listening to Erik Larson’s No One Goes Alone, and it reminds me A LOT of the Ishmael Jones series – at least so far. The thing about the Larson ‘book’ is that it’s audio only – there’s no actual book. If there were I’d have finished the damn thing by now, because I’m desperate to find out not just whodunnit but also how and why it was done. ‘Thumbing’ to the end of an audio is just damnably awkward – but I’ve been sorely tempted all the same. (I’ll finish the damn thing this week one way or another! And in case you can’t tell, I’m really, REALLY frustrated by the lack of a text.)

Once the resemblance between the two became clear to me, I picked up The House on Widows Hill, which is the next book in my catchup on this series, in the hopes of getting a bit of resolution by proxy for the book I can’t quite carve out enough time to finish.

It even worked, sorta/kinda. Which is awesomely relieving in a peculiar, reading obsessive kind of way.

So this book was pretty much the right book at the right time, even if my reading did start out as a search for a catharsis by substitution.

The House on Widows Hill very much has the classic haunted house vibe going on – even though with Ishmael and Penny involved the reader begins the story aware that it just isn’t going to go to any of the places that haunted houses normally go. That Ishmael gets shaken out of some of his internal certainties and securities added a bit to the ongoing arc of the series while at the same time ramping up the tension of both this book and the books in the series yet to come.

As I’ve already read the final book in the series so far, Haunted by the Past, I have one more book left in my catchup of this series, and that’s Buried Memories. Which I’ll probably get around to THIS coming Halloween, unless the urge for some of this author’s trademark line in snark hits me sooner and isn’t satisfied by the next book in his Gideon Sable series, Where is Anybody?, scheduled for publication in August.

#BookReview: The Holy Terrors by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Holy Terrors by Simon R. GreenThe Holy Terrors (A Holy Terrors mystery) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal
Series: Holy Terrors #1
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on February 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Six people locked in a haunted hall . . . Cameras watching their every move . . . And then someone dies . . . This first in a spine-tingling new paranormal mystery series from New York Times bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green will make you doubt your judgement - and believe in ghosts!
Welcome to Spooky Time, the hit TV ghost-hunting show where the horror is scripted . . . and the ratings are declining rapidly. What better way to up the stakes - and boost the viewership - than by locking a select group of Z-list celebrities up for the night in The Most Haunted Hall in England (TM) and live-streaming the 'terrifying' results?
Soon Alistair, a newly appointed Bishop, actress Diana, medium Leslie, comedian Toby and celebrity chef Indira are trapped inside Stonehaven town hall, along with June, the host and producer of the show. The group tries to settle in and put on a good show, but then strange things start happening in their hall of horrors.
What is it about this place - and why is the TV crew outside not responding? Are they even on air?
Logical Alistair attempts to keep the group's fears at bay and rationalise the odd events, but there are things that just can't be explained within reason . . . Can he stop a cold-blooded would-be killer - even if it's come from beyond the grave?
This locked-room mystery with a paranormal twist is classic Simon R. Green, featuring his trademark humour and imagination, irresistible characters, and thoroughly entertaining plotting.

My Review:

Four strangers locked in a haunted building overnight with two TV “personalities”, their every action and emotion covered by hidden cameras, all in pursuit of a payday that’s not going to be nearly as generous as their agents led them to expect.

Sounds like the perfect setup for a “Reality TV” program. Or a joke. Or, in this particular case, a joke of a reality TV show that is desperate to recapture the market share it lost much longer ago than its presenter is willing to admit. Or allow.

Put another way, a has-been comedian, a wannabe almost-celebrity chef, an outspoken bishop and an actress whose career isn’t what it used to be, walk into a haunted town hall to film an episode of ‘Spooky Time!’ with its resident medium AND its indefatigable host.

There should be a punchline coming for that joke. And there certainly is for at least some of the participants. At least for the ones that survive the night.

Anyone who has any illusions left about the exact amount of ‘reality’ present in a so-called reality TV show needs to check those illusions before the first page – because they’ll all be spoiled although the plot of the book certainly is not.

From the moment the time-locks ominously click shut and the lights start to go out, it’s clear to the participants that something has gone even wronger than they expected after seeing the dilapidated state of the place they’re supposed to be spending the night. But in the gloomy, shadowed and downright spooky atmosphere, it’s all too easy to chalk up their fears to the idea that something supernatural might be stalking their number.

But as the Bishop says to the Actress, that doesn’t add up. It’s clear, at least to him, that they are being led astray by their own guilts and fears. And even though there is an entirely different sort of ‘leading astray’ that the Actress would prefer to do to the Bishop, she’s willing to trust him to see her through this long and particularly dark night.

Escape Rating B-: I ended up with a LOT of mixed feelings about this one, some of which may have to do with having no love or even liking for so-called reality TV. (Although, honestly, if the author has any love for that genre it’s a particularly twisted version of it.)

It’s clear from the outset that all of the so-called ‘supernatural’ events are planned and prepared, that the show is on its last legs and the guests were chosen for their gullibility, their expendability, or both. And because they were relatively cheap – just like the all-night rental of the supposed ‘Most Haunted Hall in England.’

Particularly as, in spite of all the horror implications of the blurb and the Goodreads genre assignment, the title of the series to follow has it right, The Holy Terrors is a mystery and not horror at all.

Which means that the reader’s enjoyment of and/or absorption in this story relies on either getting caught up in the mystery or being charmed by its characters – many of whom are not charming at all.

Although the Bishop and the Actress certainly are, and their increasing charm with each other does help carry readers along. Which is a good thing, because ‘whodunnit’ was obvious long before the big reveal – complete with a bit of good old-fashioned villain monologuing – at the end.

As the first book in a series that looks like it will follow the adventures of the Bishop and the Actress as they have more mysterious and possibly spooky adventures, there’s a fair amount of heavy lifting to be done that doesn’t feel like it’s completely done by the book’s end.

Because I’m not totally sure what the newly christened “Holy Terrors” will actually be doing in their future adventures – beyond that they’ll be doing them together. It’s not clear even at the end of this book and I’ve been guessing throughout.

Not that I won’t ‘tune back in’ to find out when the next book appears. I just hope it’s a bit more clear by then AND that it doesn’t sidle quite so close to the territory the author has already occupied by Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny Belcourt.

One final note to say thanks for the memories, the facepalm and the headslap – not necessarily in that order and definitely not as the Actress said to the Bishop – which is what all of the above are referencing.

This entire story – and quite possibly the series intended to follow – is part of a long-running British tradition of jokes and/or clichés (your mileage may vary on which they are) of double entendres that begin or end with “as the bishop said to the actress” or the other way around. Phrases that take on a sexual overtone, undertone, or alternate meaning by adding that phrase that either way is roughly equivalent to a joke ending, “that’s what she (or he) said”.

It niggled at me through the whole book as something familiar, but I was caught up just enough in the mystery at hand and the bell didn’t ring until AFTER I finished the book. Because that phrase, in popular parlance in British in the 1930s, was one that Simon Templar, The Saint, used frequently and often in the original books by Leslie Charteris – of which I read as many as I could find back in the dark ages after seeing bits of the TV series starring Roger Moore in syndication way back when.

I don’t remember that phrase from the TV series, but in the books, Templar used it frequently, often and as intended. Honestly, I’m not even sure I was quite old enough to get the double entendres at the time I read the books, but the whole thing stuck in my memory and thereby hangs that facepalm and headslap.

Because if this series continues, the whole entire thing has the potential to be a series of investigations where the Bishop and the Actress are going to have a LOT to say to each other. And quite possibly do with and to each other between solving mysteries.

Review: Night Train to Murder by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Night Train to Murder by Simon R. GreenNight Train to Murder (Ishmael Jones #8) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ishmael Jones #8
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on March 3, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


When a body is discovered in a locked toilet cubicle on the late-night train to Bath, Ishmael Jones is faced with his most puzzling case to date.

When Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are asked to escort a VIP on the late-night train to Bath, it would appear to be a routine case. The Organisation has acquired intelligence that an attempt is to be made on Sir Dennis Gregson's life as he travels to Bath to take up his new position as Head of the British Psychic Weapons Division. Ishmael's mission is to ensure that Sir Dennis arrives safely.
How could anyone orchestrate a murder in a crowded railway carriage without being noticed and with no obvious means of escape? When a body is discovered in a locked toilet cubicle, Ishmael Jones has just 56 minutes to solve a seemingly impossible crime before the train reaches its destination.

My Review:

Reading Reality is having a bit of a theme going in the days leading up to Halloween, and this visit with Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny Belcourt is just horror-adjacent enough to be a part of it.

And I was having a hankering for some high-quality snarkitude and this author ALWAYS delivers!

Ishmael Jones is a fascinating character – to himself most of all at times. He’s an alien. Specifically, he’s a version of E.T. with no way to phone home because he doesn’t remember where it is. When he crash-landed his ship in 1963 the ship’s last act was to transform him into a human adult the best that it could – and erase all his memories of who and/or what he used to be.

It didn’t exactly do a BAD job at Ishmael’s transformation. He blends in just fine. But he doesn’t change or age, so he’s looked like a man in his mid-30s for almost 60 years at this point and has the same problem that vampires often do in paranormal stories. He has to move on every so often before too many people start to notice too much.

Ishmael’s solution has been to work for a series of agencies so black and so secret that they don’t even know what their own right and left hands are doing – let alone anyone else’s. They keep his secrets and in return he keeps theirs and does the kind of dirty work that actual humans aren’t capable of for very long – if at all.

His work and romantic partner, Penny Belcourt, knows as many of his secrets as Ishmael himself does. They met on a case, the first one in this series, The Dark Side of the Road, a story that began as a rather typical English country house mystery that went seriously far into the Dark Side of multiple Forces.

Ishmael and Penny are the coyly-named Organization’s best agents, so it’s not exactly a surprise for them to be ordered to report for a top secret, rush-rush and hush-hush job, not even to London’s St. Pancras Station. It’s just annoying and both of them are at least somewhat annoyed by being handed tickets to an express train to Bath with not nearly enough information about their instructions to guard a high-ranking politician who has just been promoted to an equally high-ranking top-secret job on said politician’s imminent journey to take up his new post via that London to Bath train.

The trip will take less than two hours. It shouldn’t be that difficult to keep the man alive for that length of time on a moving train that will not stop to take on anyone or anything until it reaches its destination.

But if it were an easy job the Organization wouldn’t be putting its best agents on the case. And they are, so it isn’t. It’s just that it’s even more clandestine and hush-hush than even Ishmael and Penny suspected. And they suspected a lot, and everyone, from the very beginning.

Escape Rating A-: There are two things I find pretty much endlessly fun about this particular series. One, of course and always, is the author’s trademark snarkitude. It’s a signature that follows him everywhere from urban fantasy like his Nightside series to science fiction such as his Deathstalker series to the genre-mashup that is the Ishmael Jones series.

The other thing is a particular feature of the Ishmael Jones series, and it’s that this series is a genre-mashup of pretty much everything. It’s a bit of SF in Ishmael’s alien origins, a bit of urban fantasy in that he often faces monsters that are believed at the outset to be things that go bump in the night, and there’s generally a bit of horror in that whatever he’s investigating leaves a thoroughly gruesome trail of dead bodies and parts thereof.

But ultimately – or at its heart or a bit of both – the Ishmael Jones series are mysteries. Someone gets dead early on in each book, if there isn’t already a corpse laying around at the start. It’s up to Ishmael and Penny to figure out whodunnit and put a stop to them one way or another before the story reaches its inevitably grisly end.

What makes the mystery so much creepy fun is that as the mystery deepens there’s always a sneaking suspicion that the perpetrator is paranormal in some way, and that in the end that suspicion is nearly always a very tasty red herring. This particular mystery takes that assumption one better, as there is, for once, something actually paranormal going on but it isn’t either the monster or even the victim.

Because one of the things that this series does so very well, and with so much high-quality snark and occasional sheer bloody-mindedness, is that the worst monsters in this or any other universe are inevitably human. And that’s what keeps me coming back to this series, over and over and over again.

If this series sounds like it might be your jam, or if you’ve ever wanted to see just how far a classic-type mystery like a country house mystery or a strangers on a train type mystery can be led very, very far astray, take a look at The Dark Side of the Road and see if you like the view from that side.

I’ll be continuing with my journey with Ishmael Jones and Penny Belcourt with the next book in the series, The House on Widows Hill, the next time I have a yen for either high-quality snark, horror-adjacent mystery, or a bit of both!

Review: For Love of Magic by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: For Love of Magic by Simon R. GreenFor Love of Magic by Simon R. Green
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, historical fantasy, urban fantasy
Pages: 240
Published by Baen on May 2, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

History isn’t what you think it is. It’s been rewritten to remove all the magic. Together, two people decide to put things right. A new novel of magic, history and true love from Simon R. Green.
When they fall in love, it’s magic!
History can change and has changed. Magic was and is real. 
Once upon a time, there was a forgotten era of magic and monster. But the remnants — and all memory — of the old world have been replaced by the sane, the scientific, and the rational. But sometimes the magical past isn’t content to stay past. That’s where Jack Damian comes in. It’s his joy to protect our present from the supernatural remnants of an earlier time, a different history.  It’s his job to make the past safe.
Jack is called to the Tate Museum, where dozens of people have disappeared beneath the surface of a painting. While investigating, he finds himself smitten with a mysterious art expert Amanda Fielding. But Amanda has plans of her own, and soon the two are traveling through time — back to the Roman Empire and then forward through history, from King Arthur’s court to Sherwood Forest. As they explore histories past as written and overwritten, the balance of magic and science shifts, and the choices the two make could change the world forever.

My Review:

The fun of For Love of Magic begins with the title, as there are SO MANY possible interpretations. And all of them are applicable and all of them are fascinating.

In the beginning, Jack Daimon doesn’t love magic. In fact, his job is to eliminate whatever bits of it sneak into our rational, scientific world. But he does fall head over heels in love with Amanda Fielding the moment he meets her – in the middle of closing up an abyss to an extremely nasty and highly magical place. And there’s more magic in that meeting – and in Amanda herself – than initially meets the eye.

Jack Daimon is the Outsider, the one person who exists outside of magic AND the various and sundry organizations and armies that are attempting to stamp it out. His job is to eliminate the chaos of magic whenever it appears.

He’s very, very good at his job. But his job requires that he have an open mind about pretty much everything. The people who don’t believe in magic tend to become gibbering wrecks whenever it appears – which in Jack’s line of work turns out to be frequently and often.

What Jack doesn’t know when we first meet him – and he first meets Amanda – is that magic is dying. Not of natural causes, but by being ruthlessly stamped out by some very mysterious secret masters of the universe who plan to control everything and everyone.

For fun, profit and their own benefit, of course.

Jack is magic’s – and Amanda’s – one last chance to set things right before it’s too late. But first he has to learn a lesson. Or two. Or ten. Whatever it takes to stand up and hold his ground in the face of everything he’s ever believed – and every force that has ever tried to remake the world in its own dry, humdrum, ruthlessly rational and utterly tyrannical image.

There’s supposed to be magic in the world. It’s Jack’s job to stand his ground so that Amanda has the chance to bring it back. If he can. If he decides he should. If he can make up his mind – and his heart.

Escape Rating A-: I had a great time with For Love of Magic, but whether you will or not probably depends on how much you like snarky characters with even snarkier commentary – even though this Jack isn’t filled with nearly as much of the snark as some of the author’s previous protagonists.

Jack isn’t nearly as snarky as Gideon Sable or Eddie Drood, because Jack needs a sense of wonder to make his way through the magical mystery history tour that Amanda takes him on. Her plan is to convince Jack, or use Jack, or a bit of both, to bring the magic back before it – and she – are gone forever.

That’s where the fun of the whole thing comes in, as she takes Jack to the times and places where magic made life, well, magical – before the forces of rational science rewrote history for their own purposes.

She doesn’t work through logic, because that’s the enemy’s strategy. She grabs for the heart, both Jack’s and the reader’s, by going back to times and places that were filled with wonder. She makes this adventure a tour of what rational science has reduced to mythical Britain, and draws Jack to Camelot and Sherwood Forest. Not to show him that magic will make things perfect – because human beings are NOT perfectable. But by showing him that some things are worth fighting for and that one of those things is a world that is not reduced to humanity only.

So she gives him a dream – and she gives it to us too. All the better because it hits a few contemporary issues squarely on the nose – and promptly punches them several times.

Like much of this author’s work, it does borrow a bit from his vast canon, but not in any way that’s overt or requires previous familiarity. Personally, I saw elements of Shadows Fall and Hawk and Fisher, as well as the Nightside. But then I also felt like I was seeing bits of the Iron Druid’s perspective, and Amanda was often referred to by some of the same terms that that series uses for the Morrigan.

By throwing King Arthur and Robin Hood, Boudicca and Gloriana, Frankenstein and Faust, into the mix, it stirs up a heady brew of the possibilities of where magic in the world might take us – if we still have the chance to let it. And that always makes for a fantastic read!

Review: Till Sudden Death Do Us Part by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Till Sudden Death Do Us Part by Simon R. GreenTill Sudden Death Do Us Part (Ishmael Jones #7) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ishmael Jones #7
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on April 30, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


A wedding. A murder. A 200-year-old curse: Ishmael Jones is plunged into a baffling investigation when he answers an old friend's call for help.

Although he hasn't seen Robert Bergin for 40 years, Ishmael feels duty bound to respond when his old friend calls for help. Robert's daughter Gillian is about to be married, and he is afraid she'll fall prey to the ancient family curse.
Arriving in rural Yorkshire, Ishmael and his partner Penny learn that the vicar who was to perform the ceremony has been found dead in the church, hanging from his own bell rope. With no clues, no evidence and no known motive, many locals believe the curse is responsible. Or is someone just using it as a smokescreen for murder? With the wedding due to take place the following day, Ishmael has just a few hours to uncover the truth.
But his investigations are hampered by sudden flashes of memory: memories of the time before he was human. What is it Ishmael's former self is trying to tell him ... ?

My Review:

I pulled this one from somewhere in the midst of the virtually towering TBR pile because I finished a book in one of this author’s other series for a Library Journal review and realized that I was still in the mood for his particular brand of snark and that I wasn’t caught up to Ishmael Jones yet.

So here we are. Or rather, there Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny Belcourt are, in another play on a country house ghost story. One in which the ghost may not be real, but there really is something out to get Ishmael, Penny, and whoever either invited them or whom they need to protect from something that has gone loudly, seriously and with malice very much aforethought bump in the night.

Ishmael’s been invited to a wedding in Bradenford, Yorkshire, a rural town he’s never been to before and hopes never to be again even before the mess of this case.

The thing about Ishmael – well, honestly there are a LOT of things about Ishmael, most of which Penny Belcourt knows (because they met on a case in their first adventure, The Dark Side of the Road). Ishmael and now Penny work for a mysterious organization rather coyly named The Organization because Ishmael needs something that clandestine to hide him from all the ubiquitous security devices and agencies that have cropped up all over the world since he crash-landed his UFO in 1963. And hasn’t aged a day since.

He looks human because his ship fixed that before it went defunct. But it didn’t do a perfect job. It’s not just the lack of aging, it also locked away all his memories of who and what he was before.

But this is a case that seems designed to bring back more of his past than he has any desire to meet. Both his past passing for human AND his past as an alien monster. He’s not even sure which reveal is going to be worse.

Still, he and Penny come to Bradenford because he owes an old colleague more than he can ever repay. Even if his attempt at that repayment is going to reveal at least some of the secrets he’s been keeping. Because it’s been 40 years since Ishmael and Robert Bergin have met. Bergin shows every single one of those years – while Ishmael displays precisely none.

But Bergin reluctantly recognizes that he’s not the man he used to be, while Ishmael still very much is. And that’s exactly who Bergin needs, a skilled operator used to dealing with all the terrible and secret things that no one wants to admit exist.

There’s a curse on the Bergin family and it has reached out from the past to grab his daughter and everyone involved with her wedding to an actor who probably isn’t nearly good enough for her.

But no one deserves to get sliced to pieces by some monster with fangs, claws and a 200-year-old vendetta.

It’s up to Ishmael and Penny to figure out whether there really is a curse – or just someone taking advantage of the old legends for grisly purposes of their own.

Escape Rating B: This turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. The author is very much an acquired taste – but one I acquired so long ago that when I get the craving nothing else will do.

What brings me back over and over is the snarkitude. Whoever the protagonist is in one of his series, they are all cut from the same snarky, wry, sarcastic cloth, thinking all the things we wish we’d thought at the time, making all the smart-assed observations – and still managing to get the dirty job done no matter who they piss off along the way.

Because there’s always someone – and usually multiples.

Part of what makes Ishmael Jones in particular so interesting are the built-in ironies of the whole setup. Ishmael is an alien investigating weird shit who doesn’t believe in demons, ghosts, spirits or any of the other psychic phenomena that the people he’s investigating are generally desperate to blame for whatever has gone wrong. He knows there’s weird shit out there, but he’s very much aware that there’s always a human agency behind it. Every once in a while, it’s a human agency he used to work for.

From Ishmael’s perspective, this is a story about his own past coming back to bite him. Both in the sense that he learns stuff he still didn’t want to know about his old friend Bergin and their mutual employer, but also because he’s feeling like his old identity is emerging from the shadows he’s kept it buried in for almost 60 years. He’s afraid of his own past and his inability to control it because Ishmael is the persona that Penny loves and he never wants to lose that.

But this is also a murder-mystery. Everyone in town wants it to be the old curse because no one wants to think there’s a brutal murderer roaming their peaceful little town. A mysterious curse brings tourists while a rampaging mundane murderer will drive everyone away. At least it ought to.

I have mixed feelings about the way the murders get solved. It could be interpreted as a bit of a cheap shot that got redeemed at the end with a clever twist. You’ll have to decide for yourself.

Howsomever, I enjoyed my journey with Ishmael and Penny, so I’ll be back to see how Ishmael’s reconciliation between his past and his present continues in Night Train to Murder the next time I have a taste for extreme snarkitude blended with murder.

Review: A Matter of Death and Life by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: A Matter of Death and Life by Simon R. GreenA Matter of Death and Life (Gideon Sable #2) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Gideon Sable #2
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House Publishers on March 1, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


Master thief, rogue and chancer Gideon Sable is back for another fast-paced supernatural heist - and this time he has the vault of a Las Vegas casino in his sights

Judi Rifkin is one of the world's most successful collectors of the weird and unnatural. In a London underworld filled with criminals with very special talents, Judi is a force to be reckoned with.
And Gideon Sable - thief, rogue and chancer - owes her a very large favour.
Judi makes him an offer he can't refuse: steal her the legendary Masque of Ra, tucked up safe in a Las Vegas casino, and she'll wipe the slate clean.
This isn't Gideon's first heist by a long shot. But with old grudges threatening to cloud his judgment, an unpredictable crew who don't entirely trust each other and a formidable supernatural security team guarding his target, this job might be a gamble too far . . .
A Matter of Death and Life is the sequel to The Best Thing You Can Steal, and is the second supernatural heist thriller featuring master conman Gideon Sable from British SFF veteran and New York Times bestselling author Simon R. Green.

My Review:

The snark is turned up past 11 and all the way to 13 in this second book in the author’s Gideon Sable series. But don’t let the indication that this is the second book in the series fool you into thinking that all you need to read to get completely up to speed is that first book, The Best Thing You Can Steal.

Not that it isn’t a whole lot of snarky fun.

But the thing about the author of this urban fantasy series – along with several others, a couple of paranormal series and some epic space opera – is that all of his stories are told in the first person singular voice of the main character – in this case Gideon Sable.

Whether that featured antihero – because honestly, none of them are exactly heroes in any classic mold whatsoever – is John Taylor (Nightside), Eddie Drood (Secret Histories) or a whole host of others, the truth is that the voice of the protagonist reads like its the voice of the author. Because they all more or less the same voice – with just a few minor variations.

Not that that’s a bad thing, because I like my snark dial turned all the way up. This is an author who always makes me laugh out loud because his snark – and his characters – are clever in their actions and especially in their way with words. And those characters are more often archetypes than actual individuals. For readers who are familiar with the author’s previous works, they are archetypes that seem very, very familiar. Like old friends that you can’t totally trust not to either break your heart or your bank account. Or both.

Most likely both.

All of the above means that he’s an acquired taste. He just happens to be a taste I acquired a long time ago. Just like my nostalgia for Cincinnati Chili. It’s not something I’d want all the time, or even too often too close together, but when I have a taste for it, nothing else will do.

And I definitely had a taste for it – the author, not the chili – this weekend.

The story in A Matter of Death and Life is a direct followup to the events in the first book, The Best Thing You Can Steal. Gideon and his girlfriend, Annie Anybody, are roped into committing a heist for the person they cheated in the earlier book.

This time, they have to steal a supernatural and extremely creepy mask from a Las Vegas casino. The mask is supposed to grant eternal life and youth. Gideon’s, well, let’s call her his patron, wants the mask in order to get one up on her ex-husband. Gideon wants to get his own back from the current owner of the mask. His patron also wants to get one up on him – and it sure seems like someone is manipulating them both.

It’s going to be the job from hell. And it might just send them all there – and possibly back again – before it’s over. One way or another.

Escape Rating B+: This is a story where I don’t have any mixed feelings. I had a cracking good time with Gideon Sable and his more-misfit-than-usual crew as they took on Las Vegas. Calling this book a fantastic, slightly supernatural version of Ocean’s Eleven – complete with ALL the wisecracks – would be more accurate, and more fun, than anyone might have expected.

Clearly, I had fun. In fact, I had laugh out loud fun. It helps that Las Vegas as the public sees it, the casinos, the glitz and the fake glamor hiding a rapacious money machine, is a setting that is just ripe for all of the snarkitude that Gideon Sable can muster.

It’s also a wheels within wheels within wheels kind of story. As much as the setting reminds me of Ocean’s Eleven, the caper itself just screams Leverage – but with a twist. With multiple twists, some with lime and some with cyanide – or something worse, creepier and deadlier.

Under the supernatural gloss, this is a story about power, greed, paranoia and revenge all tied up in a great big ball of wrong. It’s also a cat and mouse game where each character believes they are one of the cats – only to discover that they are one of the mice after all. And that the real cat has been preparing them for dinner the entire time.

But the characters, especially Gideon and his crew, are also more than a bit of an in-joke. A joke that the reader only gets if they are familiar with at least the author’s previous urban fantasy series. Because Gideon Sable used to be someone else, before the real Gideon Sable died and our protagonist assumed his identity. The author closed out all of his previous urban fantasy series with Night Fall back in 2018. But Gideon and his crew sound an awful lot like many of his previous bands of misfits. So it’s possible that Gideon in particular used to be part of one of those other stories – until he had to find another identity.

Which means that the whole setup of Gideon Sable’s twisted version of our world could be one we’ve already seen, and Gideon himself could be someone we’ve already met. A possibility that teases me no end. But probably would not resonate with someone who had not been previously exposed to this author’s brand of Gordian Knot worlds within worlds and shadows hidden behind shadows.

But when I’m in the mood for extreme snarkitude, there’s none better. Gideon Sable, and all of this author’s characters, have refined smart-assery into a fine art – and sometimes that’s just what a reader needs to get through. So I hope Gideon Sable will be back in the not too distant future.

Review: Jekyll & Hyde Inc by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
Review: Jekyll & Hyde Inc by Simon R. GreenJekyll & Hyde Inc. by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, urban fantasy
Pages: 240
Published by Baen on September 7, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A NEW MASTERPIECE OF MACABRE HUMOR AND ACTION FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES, THE NATIONALLY BEST-SELLING NIGHTSIDE SERIES, THE DEATHSTALKER CHRONICLES, THE ISHMAEL JONES PARANORMAL MYSTERIES, AND MORE!
HYDE IN THE SHADOWS
Daniel Carter was a London cop who just wanted to do the right thing. But during a raid on an organ-selling chop shop, he is almost torn to pieces by monsters. And no one believes him. Hurt and crippled, his career over and his life in ruins, Daniel is suddenly presented with a chance at redemption. And revenge. It seems that more than two centuries ago, the monsters of the world disappeared—into the underworld of crime. Guild-like Clans now have control over all the dark and illegal trades, from the awful surgeries of the Frankenstein Clan, to the shadowy and seductive Vampire Clan, to the dreaded purveyors of drugs and death, the Clan of Mummies. And there’s always the Werewolf Clan, to keep order.
Only one force stands opposed to the monster Clans: the superstrong, extremely sexy, quick-witted Hydes! Now Daniel is just one sip of Dr. Jekyll’s Elixir away from joining their company. At Jekyll & Hyde Inc.
 About Simon R. Green:
“A macabre and thoroughly entertaining world.” —Jim Butcher on the Nightside series
“A splendid riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, conveyed with trademark wisecracking humor, and carried out with maximum bloodshed and mayhem. In a word, irresistible.” —Kirkus, Starred Review of Simon R. Green's Night Fall
“[F]or those who want a fantasy-genre mash-up that doesn’t slow down.” —Booklist on From a Drood to a Kill
 “Simon R. Green is a great favorite of mine. It’s almost impossible to find a writer with a more fertile imagination than Simon. He’s a writer who seems endlessly inventive.” —Charlaine Harris
 

My Review:

I picked this book up because I usually enjoy the author’s fine line in snark. His characters generally manage to say the things we all wish we’d said, and that’s always good for a bit of a chuckle, even if the humor involved tends to have the whiff of the gallows about it.

In other words, I expected to enjoy this book, at least on some levels. Even when his stories are at their most macabre, there’s always been something in the banter and the byplay that has tickled me a bit. Even when, or especially because there’s frequently something awful going on at the time.

I expected to have a good reading time with Jekyll & Hyde Inc. I really did. I liked the concept of it taking a monster to catch a monster, and the idea of Edward Hyde still running around London almost a century and a half after he supposedly died – along with his alter ego and progenitor, Dr. Henry Jekyll.

The blurb makes it seem as if the Hydes are, if not exactly on the side of the angels, at least on the side of putting the monsters down and out of both our and their misery – because the monsters have certainly earned it.

I was looking for a fun, horror-adjacent story with a heaping helping of snark. I expected to end with a bit of a chuckle and the feeling of order restored to the world in one way or another. Something along those lines.

But at the end of Jekyll & Hyde Inc., all I felt was sad. And I’m really, really sad about that.

Escape Rating C: From the description, and from the opening of the story, I’ll admit that I was wondering if this was going to turn out to be a bit like the Secret Histories series, only with real monsters as the protagonists instead of merely human monsters with great technology.

But the Hydes as a group don’t seem to have any redeeming motives the way that the Droods did. The Droods believed that they knew what was best for humanity, and even if they were wrong about methods or results, even if they caused a lot of collateral damage, and even if some of their number were corrupt, their overall goals at least nodded at being righteous.

The Hydes, or at least Edward Hyde himself, just want to eliminate all the other monster clans so that he can be the top dog and rule the underworld. Daniel and Tina are just tools in his hands who don’t realize that they are being taken for a ride until very near the end.

The underworld the Hydes are taking out has all the creepiness of the Nightside, or even Neil Gaiman’s  Neverwhere, without any light shining in from John Taylor or Richard Mayhew or even the Marquis de Carabas. In other words, I was looking for a least a bit of a redemptive arc or the possibility thereof, and all I got was a breather between monster mashes.

The relationship that develops between Daniel and Tina may be intended to mimic some kind of romance, but just doesn’t have the kind of heart that the relationship between Ishmael Jones and Penny Belcourt has in that series. Or even the on again/off again relationship that Gideon Sable has with Annie Anybody in The Best Thing You Can Steal.

Something is just missing in Jekyll & Hyde Inc. It has all the grim and all the dark of many of the author’s previous series, but it’s lacking in the light moments – and the snark – that made Ishmael Jones and Gideon Sable and the Nightside so compulsively readable.

Qualities that I sincerely hope he brings back in his next book, whatever it might be. I’ll certainly be looking for it the next time I go back to see what Ishmael Jones is up to in Till Sudden Death Do Us Part and the rest of that series.

Review: Murder in the Dark by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Murder in the Dark by Simon R. GreenMurder in the Dark (Ishmael Jones, #6) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, paranormal, suspense, urban fantasy
Series: Ishmael Jones #6
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House Publishers on December 1, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads


The sudden appearance of a sinister black hole in the English countryside leads to a baffling murder investigation for Ishmael Jones.

"The past is England's dreaming, and not all of it sleeps soundly..."
Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny have been despatched to assist a group of scientists who are investigating a mysterious black hole which has appeared on a Somerset hillside. Could it really be a doorway to another dimension, an opening into another world?
When one of the scientists disappears into the hole — with fatal consequences — Ishmael must prove whether it was an accident — or murder. But with no clues, no witnesses and no apparent motive, he has little to go on. Is there an alien predator at large, or is an all-too-human killer responsible? Only one thing is certain: if Ishmael does not uncover the truth in time, more deaths will follow...

My Review:

There’s an uncanny, unnatural hole in the fabric of the universe, and it’s up to an almost-but-not-quite-completely human to close this extremely dangerous door in the space-time continuum.

In a nutshell, that’s the premise of Murder in the Dark, this sixth book in the Ishmael Jones urban fantasy/paranormal/SF series.

What’s even weirder is that, at least so far, it’s also the plot of The Scavenger Door, the book I’m currently listening to. Considering that I started Murder in the Dark because I wanted to keep on reading Scavenger Door but couldn’t for a variety of reasons, I was really surprised to discover that I sorta/kinda was anyway.

The Ishmael Jones series exists at an uncanny crossroads between urban fantasy, paranormal and science fiction. The SFnal element is Ishmael himself. He’s an alien who crash landed his spaceship on Earth in the early 1960s. His ship did its level best to transform him into a human, but it glitched a few of the details. He hasn’t aged a day since he crashed. And he doesn’t remember a thing about his life before the crash. Both of these “glitches” come into play a bit in this story.

The stories in this series, for the most part, have been a play on the old country house murders. Ishmael met his romantic and investigative partner Penny Belcourt in the first book in the series, The Dark Side of the Road, when Ishmael was sent by his mysterious and secretive employers, The Organization, to look into the eerie and uncanny goings on at the country house where Penny lived with her parents. Penny was the sole survivor of that investigation.

In fact, most of Ishmael and Penny’s investigations turn out that way, the way that Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None turned out. Ishmael and Penny manage to walk away, but seldom do many – or sometimes any – of the people they are sent in to save. Even though they always manage to solve the original mystery.

Ishmael is starting to get a bit of survivor’s guilt over that fact.

But this story is a bit off of Ishmael and Penny’s beaten path, as they are sent in to secure a hole in the side of a hill in a seriously remote bit of countryside. No country houses in sight. Just a hole that swallows up everything that gets a bit too close – including one of the archaeologists that found it in the first place.

The Organization has sent a team of crackerjack scientists to investigate the unnatural hole, and sent Ishmael and Penny to keep the scientists safe while they investigate. When they arrive, both Ishmael and Penny believe that they are there to keep the scientists safe from the hole, and the hole safe from the scientists – along with anyone else who might happen to wander by.

It doesn’t take long for both of them to figure out that their real job is keeping the scientists safe from themselves – and each other.

Escape Rating B+: This was the right book at the right time, and not just for its surprising resemblance to The Scavenger Door. After yesterday’s terrific book, I was looking for something that also had a high snark quotient, and this author has always been good for that, no matter which of his many, many sandboxes he happens to be playing in at the time. And I was looking forward to swiftly sinking into a world that I already knew, and the Ishmael Jones series certainly has that box ticked off as well.

Last but not least, because I love this series and this author, I was hoping that this entry in the series would redeem the previous book, Into the Thinnest of Air, because that one didn’t quite live up to my expectations. But Murder in the Dark, even though it went to a different locale than the series usually does, was just a much better book.

All of the above being said, this is the sixth book in an ongoing series. I’m not certain that you need to have read them ALL to get stuck into this one, but reading at least the series opener, The Dark Side of the Road, would probably help a lot. Also it’s very good if you like creepy country house mysteries with even creepier monsters hiding in the shadows.

There are three mysteries in the dark in this story. One is the mystery that brings Ishmael and Penny into the picture, the mystery of the mystery of the unnatural hole. Who or what created it? What is it? Where does it go? What is its purpose?

The second mystery seems like it’s part of the first, at least at first. Who or what is killing the scientists?

And then there’s that third mystery, the one that lies behind the entire series. Who was Ishmael Jones before he became Ishmael Jones? Where did he come from? Why was he near Earth? How did he crash?

Ishmael has learned very few answers to those questions about himself. But he has learned that he really doesn’t want to know. Whoever he was and wherever he came from, right here and right now he’s exactly where he belongs, with Penny.

What’s surprising about those three mysteries is that they are not neatly tied up with a single bow. Rather, they are individually tied with separate bows, no matter how much someone tries to make it seem like the hole is responsible for the murders, possibly via the agency of someone who is a blast from Ishmael’s unremembered past.

The thing that makes this series work is that in spite of any supernatural or extraterrestrial red herrings that may appear while Ishmael and Penny are desperately trying to figure out who’s bumping off the people they’re supposed to save, the reality turns out to be that the biggest, baddest and deadliest monsters in any setting are human. The evil that people are capable of doing to each other is much, much scarier than any mythical beast or raygun toting alien. That in the end the most horrible monsters are just people doing bad things because they’re selfish and greedy. And it’s that grounding in human monsters and human evil that keep the whole thing from flying over the top, jumping the shark, and landing in a cesspit full of slime monsters.

This is a series that when I’m in the mood for it, I’m really in the mood for it and nothing else will do. So I’ll be back with Ishamel Jones and Penny Belcourt in Till Sudden Death Do Us Part the next time I need a story with the creep factor on high and the snark turned up to eleven.