Capital Murder (Arcane Casebook #7) ★★★★☆

 

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Title: Capital Murder
Series: Arcane Casebook #7
Author: Dan Willis
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 336
Words: 110K

Synopsis:

Alex Lockerby gets snagged into going to Washington, DC (the capital of the United States of America) with one of the Sorcerous Six. Of course, he immediately gets sucked into multiple investigations, all of which are “Top Priority” by the clients.

Then it turns out his girlfriend Sorsha is involved in one of the cases and the papers are publicly speculating that she can't solve it without Alex's help. As a top FBI agent, this doesn't sit well with her. Placing more strain on an already irregular relationship, Alex and Sorsha have to figure out if they can both have their careers and each other.

The main case ends up involving The Legion, a secret society of Runewrights dedicated to Evil, wanting to abscond with a whole military base's worth of secret runewright papers. They partially succeed but Alex manages to stop the majority. In doing so, he gets a target on his back from the Legion and the book ends with Sorsha in a coma and an up and coming Legion member preparing to hunt Alex down.

My Thoughts:

Another thoroughly enjoyable entry in the Arcane Casebook series. As convoluted, over the top and larger than life as usual, this hit all the points that continue to intrigue me about this series.

I do hope that Willis can slow down the pace here a bit. Alternate World War II is looming and it's obvious Runewrights will be largely involved. As I've mentioned in previous reviews, I don't like intensive ramping up of the plot “just because”.

Sorsha and Alex's relationship hits the skids and while they haven't broken up and have decided to really make it work, they haven't addressed the issues that are causing the problems in the first place. I'm concerned that Willis will treat it shallowly. That's not necessarily a bad thing since the series is pretty light but you can't treat a heavy subject lightly without a disconcerting dichotomy in your literary tone.

Willis is really churning these out and I'm pretty happy at the pace he's setting. Book 8 is already scheduled for April of '22. Yee-haw!

★★★★☆

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