Dan Wickline’s urban fantasy series is built upon the Nero Wolfe model established by Rex Stout. Lucius Fogg is a master sorcerer—perhaps the greatest alive in post World War II New York City—but he has one significant restraint on his power. If he takes even one step outside of his home, he will die. To get around this difficulty, he employs private detective Jimmy Doyle to do his legwork for him as he investigates supernatural phenomenon that catch his interest.
Jimmy Doyle is a World War II vet who took a bullet to the head and spent three months in a coma. He only woke up because Fogg sent a magical pendant to him which a nurse hung around his neck. Now he has a metal plate in his head (more on this later) together with a strong sense of justice. He’s also got a lot of attitude that makes you wonder why he doesn’t get slugged more by the men he provokes.
The final piece of background that is critical to understanding this series is that most Americans do not believe in the supernatural even though quite a few of those creatures live among them.
The novel opens with a peculiar instance of a man following Doyle, wanting Lucius Fogg’s help, but panicking and running before Doyle can find out what he wants. He darts into the street and gets hit by a van seemingly closing the strange encounter. A few days later, women start to die in a peculiar fashion and a police detective who has reluctantly come to know that the supernatural is real, asks Fogg for his help. That mystery takes up half the novel and is thoroughly enjoyable, pulling all the early threads together. In resolving the case we get introduced to the supernatural world. But in closing the case, questions Fogg does not want to pursue get opened and Doyle’s sense of justice leads him to quit Fogg’s employ so he can pursue justice on his own.
This is where things get very interesting. We learn that the relative peace that New York City enjoys was built upon a compact by Fogg, the chief vampire and werewolf of New York, and a famous hunter who had been trying to kill off all the supernatural creatures in the city. This compact kept NYC from breaking out into total war at the price of Old Town (about thirty blocks of the city) being turned over to the supernaturals. New Yorkers believe this is an area of such tremendous crime that not even the police go there, but those in the know understand the truth. Now, the compact appears to be in violation as werewolves are being seen killing people outside of Old Town.
The resolution of this mystery is very exciting, but there are some problems with it which I’m going to discuss next. So be forewarned, SPOILERS are ahead.
The compact was made necessary by the tremendous immigration of supernaturals to New York City from elsewhere—especially Europe. All werewolves and vampires in the city came to Old Town when Fogg cast the spell that formed the compact—basically limiting those creatures (and their progeny) to Old Town. This ignores the fact that it is immigration which was helping to cause the problem and presumably would continue after the compact was made. New immigrants would not be bound by the compact but apparently this never occurs to anyone. It’s especially troubling that no one even considers this possibility when they start finding new werewolves operating in the city. This is a serious flaw in the plot.
It also appears that new vampires and werewolves have been creates since the compact but this would seem to be impossible under the terms of the compact. Maybe I’m incorrect about this, but it struck me as a significant inconsistency.
The next complaint may be unfair, but the reader is constantly reminded that Jimmy Doyle has a metal plate in his head. Unfortunately, the plate is forgotten when Jimmy gets infected with lycanthropy and transforms. I don’t know that this would cause problems, but it would seem that the plate would have to be moved around by transforming in and out of wolf form and this is never addressed.
These are small complaints but they bothered me as I first read and thought about the book. That didn’t stop me from rereading the novel, however. If you like a good mystery with some supernatural elements, you’ll enjoy this series.
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2019
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