Luke Arnold’s “Dead Man in a Ditch”

Back in June, I was put on indefinite (okay, six weeks) hiatus due to a food-poisoning induced hernia and the subsequent surgery to fix it.

Knowing I wouldn’t be able to lift anything over five pounds, and also being aware that would just make me want to lift things more, I went ahead and asked my friends for books to read so I kept my mind off of “Fuck you, I do what I want.” This series was one of the suggestions. 

A lot of urban fantasy novels focus on what happens when magic suddenly reinvigorates the world. Luke Arnold, from Black Sails and other series, instead focuses on what happens when magic is suddenly stripped from an Earth that always had it: elves suddenly age, vampires turn to dust, fairies revert to the trees and rocks they called home. Humans, once the underdog and now the standard, are even affected as the magical fires and tools that kept their cities running stop working, forcing everyone to resort to other methods to keep warm and survive. 

Fetch Phillips, our main character, is at least 50% responsible for what happened to magic. After being on the side of the humans in staving the flow of magic, the result of his envy of the magical types and anger at their treatment of him, he’s become a private investigator trying to keep the non-magical lights on. In the first book, he has some vampire and women problems— his fairy romantic interest became a tree— but in the second one he’s dealing with things like actual guns, dead businessmen, and a strange stalker who’s literally stealing the essence of once magical creatures. These thefts open up another question: what if magic isn’t quite dead? What would once-magnificent creatures do to recapture the past?

These books are fun. They remind me a lot of the Dresden files, with a little more noir and fewer references to the various assets of women. Fetch Phillips is flawed and remains flawed throughout the series, which is relatable as he just feels like less of a stand-in for the author. The mysteries at the center of the novel are well-laid out and make sense within the context of the world. If you’re into that whole magical noir genre, it definitely will fill that hunger, even though it’s about a world where magic was killed.

Would I Read it Again?: Maybe. It’s not exactly the most mysterious of mysteries, but if I wanted to spend a rainy day with heist movies and detective fiction, I would happily return to it.

Rating: 4. It’s straight forward, interesting, and I enjoyed it. The plot makes sense and gets wrapped up well, with enough of a lead into the next book to make me want to read it (as soon as I whittle down the reading list a little).