Review: Ghost of a Chance by Dan Willis

The Arcane Casebook series continues in Ghost of a Chance. This is book 2 of 8 so far. It continues much like the first book in the series with no drop off in quality. Once again we are treated to a well done mix of hard boiled detective action in a world of magic.

The Story

Alex is back from the rather extreme ending of In Plain Sight, still plugging away as a low profile private eye. Heck, he starts the book pawing through refuse in a dump. Nonetheless he ends up with some high profile cases stacked up simultaneously. This time he has to work for another of the powerful sorcerers of New York City, solve a locked door murder mystery (really a series of them), and help his friend on the police force with a curious stolen goods case.

Ultimately though odd twists and turns, and his usual bits of roughhouse action, he finds a way to resolve the cases. He also picks up a love interest along the way. Once again Willis does not disappoint and keeps you guessing until the resolution.

The Characters

Again Alex Lockerby is the central character, with his normal supporting cast. A love interest alchemist is added, as well as another of the sorcerers residing in the city. The characters are well fleshed out, with solid motivations and personalities, and no anachronisms. They are people of the 1930s, and act like it.

The World

Willis takes some time to expand the readers understanding if his world’s magic and how it works. He does not use exposition, but by adding characters who specialize in those less familiar areas of magic (sorcery, again and alchemy). You get to see something of the nuts and bolts of how those bits of magic are made to work (though of course the sorcerer bit is rather more vague).

There is also an expansion rune magic with a previously unheard of school, which makes for an interesting twist, and provides a classic Pulp feel of enemies from the unrecorded past.

The politics

As with his previous volume, Willis isn’t really writing about politics, though it is clear that he’s no fan of bureaucracy and the deficiencies are demonstrated. This is not at all central to anything though, so the reader can be of any reasonable political stripe.

Content Warning

There’s a few intimate scenes between Alex and his new lady love, but there’s nothing explicit. It’s not much racier than a movie of the 1940s.

Who is it for?

Certainly if you were a fan of the first book, you will enjoy this one. If you haven’t read In Plain Sight, you might as well get that out of the way since the books are inexpensive. You can probably follow the story well enough without it, but things will be clearer.

The book is placed into the steampunk genre as well as urban fantasy. I think there may even be a sub genre ‘diesel punk’ which covers it, but I’m not overly big on splitting into minute sub categories as Amazon enjoys. If you want a good mystery yarn with magic used as a tool along with ‘ze leetle grey cells’ to solve the conundrum, give it a try. You’ll enjoy it.