Tag Archives: Alex Lockerby

Fiction, Reviews

‘Hidden Voices,’ by Dan Willis

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I’ve been following Dan Willis’ Arcane Casebook series about hardboiled runewright/detective Alex Lockerby for some time. The books aren’t high literature, but they’re a rare example of modern urban fantasy that I find entertaining. The latest book is Hidden Voices.

Alex Lockerby is thrust into the turmoil of European affairs when William Donovan, creator of the OSS, asks him to transport to Austria and rescue an alchemist who possesses a valuable secret formula the Nazis want. The job – of course – turns out to be more dangerous than expected, but Alex manages to bring the alchemist home. And then it goes wrong on this end.

Meanwhile, he’s also hired to investigate the murder of a famous vaudeville musician, beaten to death with his own mandolin.

Supported and assisted by his girlfriend, the sorceress Sorsha, Alex comes through (even battling the Aryan Superman) to champion the cause of freedom and identify the guilty.

I wish the author had worked harder to master 1930s diction – he thinks, for instance, that Alex would have called the “#” symbol a “pound sign” rather than a hash mark. But most people can’t remember how they talked in the old days anymore, so I suppose it’s not important. The story was fun and there was no objectionable material. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Hostile Takeover,’ by Dan Willis

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I don’t spend a lot of time in urban fantasy, as you may have noticed. But you may have also noticed that I’ve grown fond of Dan Willis’ Arcane Casebook series, set in the 1930s New York in an alternate universe where the world runs on magic rather than oil and coal, and where it’s possible both to be a magician and a practicing Catholic.

Alex Lockerby is a runewright, who makes his living doing magic through drawing, then burning, complex mystical designs on paper. He started humbly but has now risen in the world, being in business with the richest sorcerer in America, and in a romantic relationship with Sorsha Kincaid, the most powerful sorceress in the country.

But as Hostile Takeover begins, Sorsha is in trouble. Someone has drawn an incredibly complex rune that’s draining her life-force away. What they’re using the energy for is a mystery, but it’s gradually killing Sorsha. If Alex and his mentor Iggy (who is actually Arthur Conan Doyle incognito) can’t unlock the rune and break it, Sorsha will die.

But that’s not all that’s going on. Alex has been approached by a young couple who are being bullied by thugs who want them to sell a historic property they own. Alex promises to figure out what’s going on and stop it. Also, a runewright who held proprietary rights to a rune that gave a technical edge to a radio manufacturing company has died mysteriously. The insurance company suspects he was murdered, but can’t prove it. That’s Alex’s job.

I like these books. I like the characters. The writing’s pretty good, and the world-building fun. I recommend Hostile Takeover, along with the rest of the series. No very objectionable material, not even bad language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Capital Murder,’ by Dan Willis

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Book 7 in Dan Willis’s Arcane Casebook series is Capital Murder. Once again we join private eye/runewright Alex Lockerby as he fights the forces of evil in a magical 1930s America.

Alex has gotten pretty good at traveling by supernatural means, but only in one direction. Wherever he is, he can get home by opening a magical portal to his interdimensional vault, which opens into his home and office. But when his sometime boss Andrew Barton, the Lightning Lord of New York (who provides the city’s electricity through sorcery) wants him to accompany him to Washington DC, they have to take an airship.

Once there, Alex gets an appeal from the widow of a senator, who was recently murdered. She does not believe the man the police are accusing is really guilty. Will Alex investigate? Also a major gang leader wants Alex to locate his nephew, who has disappeared. On top of that, Alex is surprised to find that his sort-of girlfriend, sorceress Sorsha Kincaid, is in town investigating for the FBI, and she’s furious because the newspapers are giving Alex credit for her own successes. And you don’t want to see Sorsha angry…

Not highbrow entertainment, Capital Murder was an enjoyable read, like the other books in the series. We are also learning gradually more about a mysterious group called the Legion (biblical reference) which has some kind of malevolent plan to rule the world.

It was fun.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Blood Relation,’ by Dan Willis

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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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Limelight,’ by Dan Willis

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Book Number 5 in Dan Willis’s “Arcane” series about runewright/private eye Alex Lockerby is Limelight. This book takes the series to a new thematic level, and I enjoyed it.

Alex has come up in the world from his humble roots. He’s getting better-paying cases these days, and hobnobbing with the very powerful, among them the Lightning Lord, the sorcerer who provides electrical power to this magic-dominated 1930s New York City. Another is Sorsha Kincaid, the Ice Queen, who provides its refrigeration and air conditioning. She and Alex are carrying on a wary flirtation, but in Limelight they don’t have much time for anything but crime solving and disaster aversion.

First of all, a famous woman mystery writer has been murdered, to the grief of Alex’s mentor, Izzy. Izzy asks him to investigate the case, and it soon becomes clear that someone wanted to stop her writing a novel based on the unsolved murder of a Broadway actress several years back.

But the police are more concerned with a more spectacular crime, one involving magic. A bank’s wall has been breached by an explosion that appears to have been set off by a rune – only everyone knows that there are no exploding runes. Alex sees evidence here of a level of runecraft he has never seen before – oddly initiated by runes that are themselves quite crudely drawn.

Limelight was not crudely drawn. It was tightly plotted, complex, and highly dramatic. It was fun to read, and I look forward to the next installment.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Mind Games, by Dan Willis

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Dan Willis’s Alex Lockerby series of urban fantasy/mysteries grows more intriguing as one reads on. The fourth installment is Mind Games, in which many puzzles are solved and puzzlier ones appear.

Alex operates as a runewright/private eye in a 1930s New York where magic is the main technology. In Mind Games, a rich couple ask him to find their daughter, who has gone missing. Alex uses a finding rune to locate her in a nightclub, but the owner says she’s with him and they’re going to be married. The girl agrees that’s true, so Alex leaves them alone. But the next day she calls the police for rescue.

There’s also a young man who asks Alex to prove his wife didn’t murder her lover. In fact, he says, his wife didn’t even know the man she was arrested for shooting to death. Alex assumes he’s just in denial, but in fact there’s no evidence she even knew the guy. So why would she kill him?

Meanwhile, a number of the lower-level runewrights who operate from street carts have started working for a company that’s mass-producing runes in a way Alex had always assumed impossible. And homeless people are disappearing altogether.

And then there’s the little problem that Alex gave up the majority of his life force while saving the city, a few adventures back. His energy clock is running down, and his friend and mentor Iggy is working feverishly to create a life-extension rune for him.

As Alex Lockerby’s world develops over the course of the books, it grows increasingly interesting. I especially like the chemistry between Alex and Sorsha Kincaid, New York’s foremost sorceress. She’s beautiful, rich, highly dangerous, and a denizen of the highest society, while Alex is a lowly P.I. But there are sparks between them, and she’s learning to respect him. You can’t help wondering what comes next.

The prose is pretty ordinary, but the storytelling and world-building are excellent. And the characters aren’t bad. I’m enjoying the ongoing series.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Long Chain,’ by Dan Willis

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In an alternate-universe New York City, where they mostly have magic instead of science, Alex Lockerby is a runewright/private detective. In an earlier adventure, Alex saved the city by transporting the floating castle of Sorsha Kincaid, one its foremost sorceresses, into the Atlantic. This succeeded, but left him with snow-white hair and only a few months left to live. Thanks to a restorative potion he takes several times a day, he’s able to still function as a runewright, but he’s well aware of time running out.

In The Long Chain, Number 3 in the series, a Nobel-prize winning chemist disappears, and his daughter hires Alex to find him. He does, but the old man has been injured and has lost his memory. Meanwhile a number of prominent alchemists have disappeared, and Alex is concerned for the safety of one of those remaining, the mother of his new girlfriend. However, Sorsha the Sorceress wants Alex to use his “finding rune” to identify the source of a mysterious, unnatural fog that has blanketed the city for weeks and seems to be growing worse day by day.

As you’ve probably noted, the plot of The Long Chain is a complicated one, but I was impressed with the way author Dan Willis tied it all together. And one of the mysteries ended in a resolution that was at once surprising and poignant.

The writing could be better, but I’m enjoying the storytelling in this Arcane series.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ghost of a Chance,’ by Dan Willis

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Will it surprise anybody if I tell you I’m kind of a snob when it comes to my reading? Probably not. I mean, I don’t read only Russian or French books, but I sometimes pre-judge novels, especially by genre. I think of myself as a high fantasist, both in my reading and writing. Light urban fantasy, I’ll confess, feels a little like slumming to me. But I must confess, I’m enjoying Dan Willis’s Alex Lockerby novels. They’re fun.

At the end of the previous novel, Alex, a runewright/private eye in a 1930s New York City where magic works, saved the city from a sorcerous disaster. But there was a price – he drained a lot of his life energy in the process. Now his hair has turned white and his hands shake – which is deadly for his bread-and-butter business, drawing precise runes to help people find lost dogs or spouses.

But he hasn’t been forgotten. In Ghost Of a Chance, when a “ghost killer” starts murdering people in locked rooms, one of the tabloid newspapers starts claiming Alex is showing the police how to solve the crimes. It’s not true, and it only makes the cops more hostile to him than they already were. Meanwhile, a woman whose husband has disappeared hires him to find him, and an eminent sorcerer/industrialist makes a bet with Alex to locate an experimental motor that’s been stolen from him.

Alex can’t draw his runes anymore. Which means that he’s going to have to rely on plain deduction to do the job the old-fashioned way. Is he up to it? Or will he find himself locked up for interfering with the police, as they keep threatening? Or even dead?

The prose in the Alex Lockerby books is not of the very highest quality, but the plots move right along and the characters and colorful and lively. Your entertainment dollar will not be wasted. I wish the author had studied up more on one of his characters, though, one who is supposed to be an actual historical figure. I won’t say who he is, but he seems to have changed a lot of his skills and philosophy in this universe.

Fiction, Reviews

‘In Plain Sight,’ by Dan Willis

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I’m not a big fan of modern wizard books (you may have noticed I failed to succumb to the charm of Jim Butcher’s Dresden novels) generally, but someone suggested I check out Dan Willis’s Alex Lockerby novels. I read the first, In Plain Sight, and found a lot to like.

Alex Lockerby is a private eye/rune writer in 1930s New York City, but in an alternate universe. In this universe, magic substitutes for science. Pretty much everything runs on electricity, and the electricity is provided by a small number of great sorcerers, who are the plutocrats of the day (Rockefeller is one of them). Rune writers like Alex are far more common, doing smaller-scale magic at various levels of expertise.

One day a beautiful young woman comes into Alex’s office to ask him to locate her brother, who has disappeared. He was a rune writer too, and she fears he might have gotten into magical trouble he couldn’t handle. Alex takes the job, and falls for the girl.

Meanwhile, a personal tragedy strikes, in the form of the mysterious deaths of a number of people in a church homeless mission, including the priest. That priest was the man who raised Alex, and the police (reluctantly) allow him to consult on the case. He lends his expertise to the hunt for a secret journal belonging to Leonardo Da Vinci, rumored to contain a few complex runes that would give their owner almost unlimited power – power for which certain foreign agents are hunting.

I liked In Plain Sight much more than I expected. It transposed a lot of good old hard-boiled tropes, and there was a pretty neat surprise at the end, involving a major character. The tension with Christian theology that tends to go with books about magic is softened here by the fact that Alex is close to a Catholic priest who has no objections. Apparently the rules are different in this universe. Here magic is like science, and spiritual beings don’t seem to come into it.

If you like urban fantasy and hard-boiled mysteries, In Plain Sight is a pretty fun way to spend your reading time. Recommended.