The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
To Be Published: June 18, 2019
Shaharazad Haas, who is essentially the bastard love child of Sherlock Holmes and Johannes Cabal, is a consulting sorceress in the semi-drowned city of Ven. Captain John Wyndham, native to the land of Ey (which went a bit Puritanical after overthrowing their Witch-King), suffered a bizarre wound fighting the forces of the Empress of Nothing beyond the Unending Gate, and ended up rooming with Shaharazad in Ven; Ey being less than sympathetic to men like Wyndham, who began their lives as women. When an old frenemy/lover comes to Shaharazad seeking help with a blackmailer, a partnership for the ages is born.
This is not the first Sherlock Holmes/cosmic horror mashup I’ve read, but it is by far the wittiest, cleverest, funniest, and most engaging. The characters are richly drawn, Wyndham’s deadpan narration mixing with Shaharazad’s batshit insanity across a series of well-fleshed-out Lovecraftian dreamscapes to create an engrossing narrative that I had trouble putting down.
This better end up being a series, or I will be quite cross.
If you love weird fiction, detective fiction, or any sort of fiction that finally elucidates what happened in Carcosa once the Revolution came for the King in Yellow, then this is definitely for you.
A huge thanks to Penguin First to Read and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
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