In Plain Sight (Arcane Casebook #1) ★★★☆½

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Title: In Plain Sight
Series: Arcane Casebook #1
Author: Dan Willis
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 301
Words: 90.3K

Synopsis:

Alex Lockerby is a Private Investigator in the 1930's, an alternate 1930's, where magic is real. Alex himself is a Runewright, someone capable of drawing runes and powering them. Alex was orphaned and brought up in a local church ministry and he still has strong ties to the priest that helped raise him. Alex also helps out the police as a consultant, when they're willing to pay.

The book opens with Alex declaring a dead body to be a murder and that the murderers can be caught at a highly secure facility in a day or two as they attempt to rob it. The next day Alex finds out the priest is dead along with everyone in the rectory. Some sort of magic plague was loosed and the police and the FBI want the perpetrators found before they loose the plague on a high profile case. Alex also takes on a case of a missing brother for an attractive brunette and finds out that the brother was researching new runes.

In a nutshell, Alex sleeps with the brunette, finds out she isn't the missing man's sister, tracks down the plague carriers and solves the case of the first murder victim. Everything ties together and comes together in big kablam'y fashion as German Agents are trying to kill some of New Yorks' finest wizards to start a war in the United States between magic users and non-magic users. He ends up using a rune to save the city from a (non)floating Wizard's Keep and possibly loses decades of his life. He also finds out that his mentor, a private detective who taught Alex everything he knows, has the forbidden book of magic that most new runes come from. Also turns out his mentor is Arthur Conan Doyle, who faked his death to throw those seeking out the forbidden tome off his trail.

Alex agrees to forget the tome of power and just be a magical PI.

My Thoughts:

For a book that is urban fantasy AND taking place in the 1920-1930's, I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. I was introduced to this book by a post from Larry Correia. He occasionally does a Book Bomb where he promotes a book of a friend or a new'ish author whose work he likes and encourages all his readers to go buy a kindle copy to push the stats of the book up and make the author more visible. He has done it enough that I guess it works. It worked for me and I managed to snag a copy for 99cents, so I'm not complaining. Especially when I had a digital coupon for 99cents!

As soon as the brunette showed up I knew Alex was going to sleep with her. It's what detective do I guess. Of course, him deducing that she wasn't a real brunette from that experience and that leading him to figure out she wasn't the missing man's sister had me rolling my eyes. Not to be crass, but just because your pubic hair doesn't match the color of your hair on your head doesn't mean you dye your hair. Sigh. Biology, people!

Other than that, this was a fun romp filled with mystery and adventure. Having 3 cases all at once was a bit much but it kept the book from ever bogging down, as any time Alex had downtime from one case he had to immediately continue working on the other two. While I wasn't exhausted by the end of the book, I “felt” tired :-)

How runes work isn't gone into in exhaustive detail. That might be off-putting for some people but for me it was perfect. I just want to know that something works, that there ARE rules and that the character can't break those rules without consequences. As long as the author doesn't have Alex pulling rabbits out of his butt to save the day, I'm ok with vague rules of magic. A bit of mystery is a good thing.

I enjoyed this book enough to seek out the next 3. I plan on binge reading them all this month, along with the Hall of Fame SF collections, just to break up my reading rotation. Planned shake ups are much better than suddenly going off the reservation and crashing and burning. Here's to hoping the next books are just as interesting.

★★★☆½