When a magical plague is released in a Depression-era New York soup kitchen, private detective Alex Lockerby finds himself in a desperate hunt to catch a madman before he can strike again.
His investigations lead Alex to a famous thief, a daring heist, and the search for a mythic book of ancient magic, but none of that brings him any closer to finding the man responsible for the massacre.
With the police and New York’s Council of Sorcerers desperate to find the culprit, Alex becomes a suspect himself, thanks to his ties to the priest who ran the soup kitchen.
Now Alex has his book of spells, a pack of matches and four days to find out where the plague came from, or that authorities will hang the crime squarely on him.
The book is free to borrow from Amazon Prime. I believe this is under YA category but I find it okay for adults who like reading urban fantasies, magic, private detectives, 1930s noir, mystery, etc.
Alex Lockerby is a Private Detective occasionally working with NYPD using runes he writes and gets paid for it. The book has 3 different cases that are tied to each other. The first is a man-made bioweapon that killed a priest and several poor people his mission feeds everyday. The priest is like a father to him. He took Alex in as a child until he was of age. The second case involves the murder of a man who worked at a warehouse for imports, and the last one is a missing person who is also an amateur runewright.
Alex helps solve the crimes with his cop friend, Danny Pak (a Japanese with a Korean name and explained later why), some FBI agents whose leader is a beautiful sorceress, and his landlord, a British doctor who is in his 70s and also knows runes and magic.
This is the first book in Arcane Series by this author. The writing is very simple, probably for young adult readers. I don't mind as long as it tells a good story, doesn't have sex scenes and bad language, and highly entertaining.
Highly recommended.
