As you know, I’ve been working my way through Dan Willis’s enjoyable urban fantasy series about New York Private Detective/Runewright Alex Lockerby in the 1930s. Book 6 is Blood Relation.

In this one, we find our hero definitely rising in the world. Instead of his seedy old office, he is now installed in luxury space in the Empire State Building, thanks to being on retainer to the Lightning Lord, the sorcerer who provides the city with electricity. Which means he keeps getting interrupted by problems at the transmitter, as breakers at the new Brooklyn station keep tripping for no known reason.

Meanwhile a woman mathematician has been found murdered, with clues leading to foreign espionage. And prostitutes are being murdered, their blood used in some kind of ritual Alex has never seen before. Plus, a mysterious wizard is playing a game of wits with Alex.

All in a day’s work. What I like about the series is its interesting characters and cheerful mood (in spite of the occasional horror). Theological objections are neutralized by the fact that Alex is a practicing Catholic. I could criticize the prose, which is pedestrian at best, and full of neologisms. No effort is made to evoke mannerisms from the period. And I’m less than enamored with Alex’s sweetheart, the powerful sorceress Sorsha Kincaid. She’s as strong a female character as any feminist could want, but she ends up being mad at Alex for one reason or another most of the time. I like a little more tenderness in relationships (probably one of the reasons I don’t have one of my own).

But the books are entertaining and undemanding. I’m staying with them.