Your Preternatural Investigator is at it again.
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Detective
No. of pages: 231
From Goodreads:
Zombies on Main Street. Not my finest moment.
The police aren’t exactly thrilled with me, but when a cold case heats up and starts to stink of the supernatural, suddenly the sheriff is in my office offering me a job.
When the case hits boiling point, I’m dealing with monsters, black magic, and ritual killings. I even have to call on the two craziest witches in town for help. Things must be bad if the Blackwell sisters are my only hope for survival.
Maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. After all, those who fight monsters should beware that the monsters aren’t frog-faced, soul-eating demons.
As campy as the Harbinger P.I. series is, I was still lost and entertained in this paranormal tale. I wish Adam Wright would bust away from the tropes typical to this genre and raise this collection to another level, but nonetheless, the multiple mysteries and collection of cast members are both endearing and captivating.
Harbinger didn’t seem as chauvinistic in ‘Dark Magic‘ and we get many kick ass moments from his female co-stars. We also see plot points introduced in the previous two books resolved – but there are plenty more loose threads leading up to even more mysteries to be solved in future sequels.
The climax was all things apocalyptic, Wright is definitely upping the ante and improving with each installment of this series.
I feel I wanted some more development on the ongoing story lines, only because I wanted a bigger hook to have me reaching for the next sequel, ‘Dead Ground.’ Wright’s books are falling into the category of reading I associate with the likes of Clive Cussler : adventurous, entertaining, with a strong masculine sense to the writing style and not to be taken too seriously.
With our protagonist Alec healing from a gunshot wound and straight into hand to hand combat… and even a shower afterward – the author should think a little before writing implausible scenarios to prevent the reader getting pulled from the story with a wtf moment.
Still an element of misogyny- kinda like James Bond and Moneypenny- the male swoops in to save the day and solve the mystery where the female companion does all the hard work behind the scenes and fetches coffee. And of course the male lead has any number of attractive females around him, all trying to land him in bed.
Unfortunately I identified some spelling and grammatical errors that could have been solved with a simple read-through from an editor. But this is an entertaining collection and I am able to forgive a few oversights. Plus the cover art has been eye-catching and spooky, really capturing what Alec Harbinger is all about.
‘Dark Magic’ has great pacing with multiple storylines that kept me hooked. Beginning to love the magical mythology, it is unlike nothing I’ve read before, it’s intricate and we’ll realised. Bring on book four!
Overall feeling: *knowing smirk*
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Casey Carlisle 