The Affair of the Mysterious Letter, by Alexis Hall (Ace)
A delicious mash-up
of Sherlock Holmes (Shaharazad Hass, with her companion, alchemist and military
veteran Captain John Wyndham), Lovecraftian mythos, Dracula, and The King in
Yellow by Robert W. Chambers.
Shaharazad Hass, a consulting detective as well as sorceress, accepts a
commission from an old flame, who is threatened with blackmail unless she
breaks off her engagement. The list of possible enemies is long, but as
Shaharazad and John focus on the most likely suspects, one after the other is
eliminated, including the vampire Contessa, another of Shaharazad’s many, many
ex-lovers. I found the prose delightful in its replication of Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle’s narrative, transported into a world of magic, demons, mind-altering drugs,
and a sideways-in-time journey into the mysterious, menacing world of Chambers’s
Carcosa and The King in Yellow. Weird and shiveringly wonderful reading!
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