Review: In Plain Sight by Dan Willis
This is the first novel in the Arcane Casebook series. Dan Willis did not have a large bibliography beforehand. Willis now has eight books in Arcane Casebook and a spin-off series (Arcane Irregulars) with a single entry so far.
The series is what you'd get if you took the works of Dashell Hammet, or Raymond Chandler, and dropped them in a coherently constructed world with magic. In Plain Sight is a hard boiled detective story where the protagonist is a practitioner of magic in addition to being a P.I.
The story:
The story is set in an alternate 1930s with magical effects changing the nature of society and civilization. Our protagonist is a fairly unknown private eye and runewright (one of the magic forms in the world). In the process of taking on a series of cases from both private individuals and the police, get gets tangled into a web of deceit and trouble. The story is how he figures out how the problems relate, and how to untangle them.
It’s all rather more like a detective novel with magic coloring the world, than any traditional fantasy (urban or not). Yes, magic is certainly important, but the character wouldn’t change much if you took it away. He uses his mind and his fists to solve problems as much as anything.
The twists and turns of the story are not predictable, and they way in which all the threads are resolved is well done. An aspect that I appreciate is that the characters, and the world are all time appropriate without the anachronisms in thought or action which you often find in works about other eras.
The Characters:
The characters, from Alex, the main character, to Leslie, his secretary are all of their era, smartly written, and have depth. Also, as I mentioned before they are of their era, which I consider important if you want to be able to write about how the world actually worked then. If people thought and acted in 1930s like they did today, it wouldn’t have been the same world.
Motivations are well done, with different people in different lots in life having vastly different motivations. Alex, for example, both wants to make a buck and do the right thing.
The World:
Willis has done a very interesting job of building up a magic system to operate in his work. The effects of this system are pronounced in the function of New York City, and the world building has taken into account a reasonable amount of this. Just the presence of sorcerers as basically a superior class of humans has repercussions that he deals with intelligently. The author has clearly done his research on the period, and you can read that in his descriptions of daily life in the city.
Magic in this world comes in three flavors- alchemy, rune magic, and sorcery. Each has some amount of innate talent as prerequisite, but sorcery is by far the most rare and powerful. Alchemy and rune magic both involve intensive study, time expenditure and can involve expensive materials. Sorcery is innate, and capable of bending the world in big ways. Most of the differences you see in the world from the real world of the 1930s are due to sorcery.
If I had to nitpick (as is my nature), I would say he doesn't necessarily deal with the implications magic would have had on history very well. He basically assumes a history more or less in keeping with what we experience in the real world up to the 1930s. There's a bit of explaining that away by historical repression of magic, but I felt that could have been better explained. Magic is too powerful and pervasive in the world for history to have run the same course. In his Grim Noir series Larry Corriea only starts with the introduction of magic in the mid 1800s, and even then, the effects on the timeline are drastic. Willis has magic as a fixture since ancient times, and to re-write the entirety of history is too big a task to be worth it so it is understandable how he approached it (or perhaps didn’t).
The Politics:
There's a bit of politics relevant to real world history since we're dealing with the USA during the Great Depression. Alex is not a huge fan of the government, and this is due to watching it close up. Nothing is extremely overt however, it's mostly just grumbling. Politics are not at all a central feature of the book.
Content Warning:
There's one sex scene, but it's pretty tastefully done, certainly not explicit. There is some harsh language, but it doesn't read like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Violence is pretty common, but if you're reading this style of detective novel, it is to be expected. This is basically detective pulp with magic added.
Who is it for?
If you like urban fantasy, alternate history and hard boiled detective stories, this is right up your alley. I like all of the above, so it suited me perfectly. If you liked the aforementioned Grim Noir series by Correia, you should like this.
Why buy it?
It's a reasonably priced book which should entertain you. So far there's seven more books out to keep you busy, and the writer produces more on a regular schedule. He also keeps people informed of his progress on Facebook, so you know when the next book will drop. I heartily endorse the series.