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Krasia is reeling. The demons, long thought vanquished, have of course returned. But the two men who helped to end their threat are thought to be dead and their wives, who also fought the demons, are trapped by the demon horde. It is even more clear now that the new generation, Olive Paper and Darin…

Happy New Year!

Today didn’t quite turn out as expected, since we had to make a run to the doctor’s office, which was scheduled, but she was unable to draw my blood for some routine bloodwork, and we ended up going to the LabCorp. That had taken almost 2 hours – the wait was long – but was worth it, because it took the phlebotomist .5 seconds to find my vein. Best appointment ever. I told her she is amazing and I stand by that statement.

So this is a little bit late, but we finished a Prologue to Iron and Magic 2. It was posted as a partial before.

This is a possible prologue, because Mod R pointed out that it reads quite dark, so it may not be indicative of the mood of the book. Although I&M 2 is a dark fantasy, it is also a happy love story. So we will see. It maybe a bonus scene included in the book instead.

Warnings: references to child abuse and sex among minors. Due to the dark nature of the prologue, it will not be sent to your inbox directly. You have to click the link. You have been warned, read at your own risk: Awake. If you would like to comment, leave your comment on this post as pages do not allow for discussion.

I will chat with you again on Tuesday, hopefully. Happy Monday!

The post A Prologue of Much Darkness first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

When the storm of the century hits Whale Rock, Sheriff Dan Retsler does everything he can to prevent hundreds of deaths. Everything except the thing that could have prevented the storm in the first place. He should have listened to the beautiful woman who came to his office before the storm hit.

He should have believed in her magic. But he didn’t. And now he must face himself—and the horrible results of a storm he could have prevented.

“Strange Creatures” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

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Strange Creatures A Seavy County Story Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

Dan Retsler sat on the hull of a half-submerged boat, the mud thick around his thigh-high fishing waders. In his right hand, he held an industrial quality flashlight; in his left, a pocket knife. He was filthy and wet and exhausted. Night was coming and there was still hours of work to do, buildings to search, items to move. He had managed to send the warning out early enough to evacuate most of the homes along the river, but the destruction was still heart-rending, the loss almost unimaginable.

The trailers were the worst. The water had knocked them about like Tonka toys, ripping them in half, crushing them, scattering them all over the low-lying valley as if they weighed little more than matchsticks.

They were worth about that much now.

He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the thick silt that seemed to have become a part of him. The foul stench of the mud might never come out of his nostrils.

The river looked so tame now, a narrow trickle through the valley. He had seen the Dee flood before: once after a particularly wet December, and during the 1996 February storms, dubbed The Storm of the Century by commentators who felt it was pretty safe to apply that label when the century was nearly done. But he had never seen anything like this, so sudden, so furious, and so severe.

The Dee was a tidal river which opened into Hoover Bay just south of Whale Rock. High tides and too much rain often caused the Dee to flood her banks, but the floods were low and fairly predictable. Until 1996, no water had ever touched the trailer park, dubbed Hoover Village by some wag, and until that morning, had never touched the highway winding its way along the valley and into the Coastal Mountain Range.

The sun was going down, turning the sky a brilliant orange and red, with shades of deep blue where the clouds appeared. The Pacific reflected the colors. Retsler stared at it, knowing that any other day, he would have stopped, appreciated the beautiful sunset, and called someone else’s attention to it.

A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up, saw the coroner, Hamilton Denne, standing beside him. Denne had a streak of river mud on the left side of his face, and his blond hair was spiked with dirt. His silk suit had splotches and water marks, and his Gucci loafers were ruined.

Denne’s wife would probably have a fit—she came from one of Oregon’s richest families, and despised the fact that Denne still insisted on doing his job even though they didn’t need the money. If anyone asked her what Denne did, she would tell them he was a doctor, or if they pushed, a pathologist. She never admitted to the fact that he worked best with corpses. He was able to keep the secret because the coroner’s position was an appointed one in Seavy County, and no one ever printed his name in the papers.

In his left hand, Denne balanced a clean McDonald’s bag and a cardboard tray with two Styrofoam cups of coffee. He nodded toward the sunset. “This looks like the best seat in the house. Mind if I share it? I’ll pay my way with food.”

Retsler didn’t reply. Any other time, he would have bantered back, said something about bribing a public official, or teased Denne about whether or not he could have afforded the food. But Retsler didn’t feel like banter. He didn’t feel like company either, although he didn’t say so.

Denne handed him the coffee tray, then sat beside him. Retsler took out a cup and wrapped his hand around it, letting the warmth sink through him.

“Didn’t know what you liked, so I got everything,” Denne said. “Whopper, Fish something or other, Biggie Fry—”

“Whopper’s from Burger King,” Retsler said.

“Well, you know me,” Denne said. “It was my first time at a drive-through window. The wonders of technology.”

Retsler was too exhausted to smile. He knew it wasn’t Denne’s first time in a fast-food joint, since he’d dragged Denne to them countless times. Denne always protested, and then ate like a thirteen-year-old at a basketball game.

Denne was holding the bag open. Retsler reached inside, and pulled out a Big Mac and fries. The smell of grease and sugar made his stomach cramp, but he knew he had to eat. He pulled the wrapper back and took a bite, tasting lettuce, pickles, onions, and cheese long before he got to the meat.

With the lining of his silk suit, Denne wiped mud off the boat’s aluminum hull. Then he set the bag down, and rooted inside of it, pulling out a Filet-O-Fish. Denne had a penchant for the things, which Retsler always found odd, considering they lived in a place where they could get the freshest fish in the world.

“At the Club,” Denne said, peeling the wrapper from his fish sandwich. He was referring to the Club at Glen Ellyn Cove, Whale Rock’s gated community. “They have old maps of this coastline, some dating from the turn of the century. The last century.”

Half of Retsler’s Big Mac was gone. He was hungrier than he thought. He took a sip of coffee, waiting for Denne to finish. It was always easier to ignore Denne when the man was talking.

“Up until 1925 or so, this river wasn’t the Dee at all. It was the Devil’s River.”

That didn’t surprise Retsler. The Devil, in his opinion, had once dwelt on the Oregon Coast, eventually leaving behind his Punchbowl, his Churn, and oddly, his Elbow.

“When folks decided they wanted to bring tourism into Whale Rock, they shortened the name of the river.” Denne took a bite of the sandwich and talked while he chewed. “Know why it was called the Devil’s River?”

“Sea monster?” Retsler said. The food must have helped him feel slightly better. He answered Denne this time.

“No,” Denne said. “That’s Lincoln City. Devils Lake.”

Retsler wadded up the sandwich wrapper, and shoved it in the bag. He sipped his coffee. It was black and burned. He drank it anyway.

“They called it Devil’s River,” Denne said, “because it flooded unexpectedly fourteen times between 1899 and 1919. On clear nights, they said, the river would rise and fill the valley until this place looked like a lake.”

In the distance, cars swooshed across the Dee River bridge, oblivious to the destruction hundreds of feet below them. The sun was gone now, leaving traces of orange against the night sky.

“You’re saying this is not my fault,” Retsler said.

“Acts of God happen,” Denne said.

Retsler drained the Styrofoam cup. “You don’t believe that.”

“Of course I do.”

Retsler turned to him. “Hamilton, you and I’ve seen some strange things in Whale Rock.”

Denne’s eyes were hidden by the growing darkness. “It was a freak storm.”

“You’ve never lied to me before, Hamilton. Don’t start now.” Retsler stood, grabbed his flashlight, and flicked it on. The beam made the mud glisten. “Thanks for the comfort food.”

Denne had his elbows on his knees, his right hand holding the coffee cup by the lip. “Dan,” he said. “You didn’t start this thing.”

Retsler paused, wondering why that didn’t make him feel better. Then he said, “And I didn’t end it, either.”

***

It began a few days earlier, on the first day of the new year. Retsler answered the call about a suspicious smell on the beach.

The woman who had obviously made the call sat in the loose sand near the concrete cinder blocks lining the beach access. Her black hair flowed down her back. The constant ocean breeze stirred a few strands, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her legs were spread in front of her, her toes buried in the sand. She wore a light jacket despite the day’s chill. Retsler had a sense that she had been crying, but she wasn’t now. Instead, she was staring out to sea, as if the frothy brown surface—filled with dirt from the rainstorms of the last few days—held the answers to questions he hadn’t even heard yet.

Retsler stood on the concrete slab above the beach access and watched her for a moment. She didn’t seem to know she was being observed. Cool mist pelted his face. The moisture felt good. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night: fifteen drunk and disorderlies; dozens of drunk driving stops; illegal fireworks on the beach. By the time he had turned in, about four a.m., he was praying that the Y2K bug would hit on Christmas so that no one could travel to the coast for New Year’s Eve. Vain hope, he knew, but it was the only one he had.

He walked down the sand-covered ramp. Driftwood littered the beach, a testament to the rough surf of the last month. The air stank of charred wood and something else, something he didn’t want to think about.

When he reached her, he crouched. “Maria Selvado?”

She raised luminous brown eyes to his. Her eyes were so dark they seemed to have no pupils. The whites were stunningly clear. There was moisture on her lower lashes, but he couldn’t tell if it was from the mist or from tears. “Yes?”

“I’m Dan Retsler. I’m the chief of police here in Whale Rock.” As if that meant something. He ran a department of ten, double what they’d had two years ago. Whale Rock was big enough to keep them busy, but not big enough to pay the salaries of more officers.

“Thanks for coming. I didn’t know who to call.”

Probably Fish and Game, he thought. Or the State Department of Natural Resources. Half a dozen agencies probably had jurisdiction over this one.

“Where?”

She waved a hand toward the surf. “That one.”

He followed her gaze. The remains of a bonfire, piled high on a dune. He swallowed hard, thankful that he hadn’t partied the night before, and stood.

The stench was intermittent, whenever the breeze happened to blow in his direction. Otherwise, he smelled only the salty ocean freshness and knew it could lull him into thinking nothing was wrong.

He slogged through deep sand as he walked up the dune, then crossed to a driftwood log the color of long abandoned houses. On the other side of the log was a pile of charred wood half covered in sand, and about two dozen beer cans, scattered in a semi-circle. The odor was strong here, and mixed with the smell of Budweiser and old vomit.

The carcass lay half in the fire, flesh burned and bubbled, but still recognizable by shape: a seal pup, skinned. Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed it down, reminding himself that he had seen worse and not too long ago: the cats in the bag by the river, the dog the vet said had been tortured for days, the horse, still alive, and half crazed by knife wounds all along its flank.

Retsler had read the studies, been to schools, knew the psychiatric lingo. Serial killers started like this—usually as teenagers, practicing on bigger or more difficult targets, needing a greater thrill each time to duplicate that same sick feeling of pleasure.

Seal pups. Jesus.

He looked away, stared at the ocean just as the woman had been doing. The sun peeked through a break in the clouds, falling on the whitecaps, adding a golden hue to the ocean’s brown and blue surface. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, flipping it open and hitting his speed dial.

After two rings, he got an answer. “Hamilton,” he said, “sorry to disturb your holiday, but I’ve got something I need you to see.”

***

The woman chose to wait beside him. When he told her he could take her statement, if she wanted, and then she could go, she shook her head. She seemed to think her actions warranted an explanation because, after a few moments, she told him that she worked at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. Her specialty was seals.

Denne saved him from answering. Retsler heard the rumble of Denne’s rusted Ford truck, the one he’d bought in November against his wife’s wishes, because he was tired, he said, of showing up at crime scenes in his silver Mercedes. Not that there were that many murders in Seavy County, which was Denne’s jurisdiction. But Denne had an eye for detail and a knowledge of the obscure that made him useful to all the police departments in the county. For a job that was supposed to be part-time, a job that should have taken very little of his precious social time, it seemed to be a major preoccupation for him, one that was growing more and more of late.

The door slammed and Denne made his way down the beach. Retsler led him to the carcass, and watched as Denne’s face went white.

“This is how someone chose to ring in the New Year?” he asked.

Retsler stuck his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “I want you to treat this like a human murder scene. And then we’ll—”

“Compare it to that dog, I know.” Denne glanced at the ocean, then at the bonfire. “They wanted us to find this. It’s above the high-water line.”

“Or maybe they were just careless,” Retsler said. “That’s a lot of beer.”

“Looks like it was some party,” Denne said. “I’ll bet there’re one or two people who aren’t happy about how it ended.”

“Thought of that,” Retsler said.

“You know you’ll have to call the State. These pups are protected. Hell, you could get slapped with a gigantic fine if you move a live one. I have no idea what happens if you kill one.”

“It’s the same thing,” Retsler said. Tourists came across seal pups alone on the beach all the time, then picked “the poor things” up and hauled them to a vet, thinking they were orphans. The act of kindness always doomed the pup, whose mother had left it on the beach on purpose and would have been back for it. Very few pups were ever safely returned to the wild; most died after being separated from the mother.

“It’s not quite the same,” Denne said, and went to work.

***

After he’d collected the beer cans and all the other evidence he could find, Retsler offered to drive Maria Selvado back to Newport, but she refused. She said she was staying in Whale Rock for her work. She had told him, as if it were more a threat than a promise, that she would drop in his office on Monday to find out how his work was progressing.

He had left Denne to the mess, and had driven back to the station. It was in the center of downtown, with a display window that overlooked Highway 101. The station had once been prime retail space, but Retsler’s predecessor had demanded, and received, the building because, he said, most crimes were committed just outside its doors.

That was true enough. On most days, the police log was something Jay Leno might read as a joke: two people pulled over for running red lights; Slow Children sign vandalized (for the eighth time) on South Jetty Road; lost puppy found before Safeway store, identified, and returned to owner.

It was the other days that were difficult: the spur-of-the-moment kidnapping outside the local Dairy Queen; the gang war, featuring rival gangs imported from Portland, on the Fourth of July; the drownings, search-and-rescue operations, all caused by the stupid things tourists did on the beach. If someone asked him how hard his job could get, those were the things he mentioned. He never brought up Whale Rock’s secret side.

Denne was familiar with it, and Retsler’s dispatch, Lucy Wexel, was a firm believer that there was some sort of vortex here that brought out the magic in the world. Retsler’s introduction had come two years ago when intact and seemingly recently deceased bodies appeared on the beach, all from the same sixty-year-old shipwreck. Then there were the three so-called women who seduced people to their deaths in the sea; Retsler had seen them, and narrowly escaped. Denne called them mermaids, but they weren’t. They were sirens, perhaps, or sea hags, and they were something Retsler never ever talked about.

Eddie was working dispatch today, with Retsler on call. New Year’s Eve was always a nightmare, but New Year’s Day was usually as quiet as a church—people were either too hung-over or too tired to get out of the house. Even though the sun was peeking through the clouds, the beach was empty, something Retsler was grateful for.

Eddie was sitting with his feet on Lucy’s desk, a Car and Driver magazine on his lap, and three Hershey’s candy wrappers littering the floor around him. When Retsler entered, Eddie sat up, and immediately started cleaning.

“Sorry, boss. Didn’t expect you.”

Retsler waved a hand. “You’re fine.”

“Figure out what died on the beach?” Eddie, of course, had taken Selvado’s call.

“Seal pup. Skinned and burned.”

“Je-Zus.” Eddie whistled, then shook his head. He’d seen a lot of the strange things around Whale Rock as well, but they never ceased to surprise him either. “What the hell would anyone do that for?”

“Kicks, it looks like.” He took one of Eddie’s candy bars. “Mind?”

Eddie shook his head.

“Do me a favor. Look through the files, see if you can find more animal killings, anything that predates that spate of them we had last year.”

“You got it.”

“And do a location map for me too, would you?”

“Sure.” Eddie actually looked relieved. He was usually patrolling because he liked to be busy. He wasn’t suited for dispatch.

Retsler went through the open door into his tiny office. He didn’t pull the blinds on the glass windows—another feature left over from the retail days—but he sat hard at his desk. Incident reports from the night before littered the left corner. He stared at them for a moment, as if they were the enemy, then he frowned.

He might find something in them as well.

He slid them over to the center of his desk, and began to scan. He had to sign off on them anyway—a departmental policy as old as Whale Rock and one he saw no need to change—and he may as well do so now while he was waiting for Denne. Retsler had a few incident reports of his own to file from the night before, as well as the one this afternoon, but he wasn’t ready to put anything down on paper.

Fifteen reports later, almost all of them drunk and disorderlies, almost all of them depressing in their sameness, Retsler stood and stretched his cramping hand.

“Hey!” Eddie said from the front. “Got something weird.”

Retsler left his desk and walked to the dispatch area. Eddie had files scattered around him—both of them would pay dearly for that when Lucy came in on Monday morning—and at the center of it all, a map of Whale Rock. There were multicolored dots all over the village. Retsler had forgotten how good Eddie was at details. Usually he didn’t have to focus on them when he was on the street.

“I used red for this year,” Eddie said. “I mean, last year. You know, ’98. Green’s for ’97, and blue’s for ’96. I put the seal pup in last year’s because the poor thing probably died before sundown.”

“How do you figure?” Retsler asked.

“It takes a lot of work to skin an animal, don’t care how good you are at it. It’s harder if you can’t see too good.”

“They had a bonfire.”

“And found a seal pup at night? I don’t think so.”

He had a good point. Retsler made a mental note of it. He leaned over the map and saw, while there were a few dots all over the city, the biggest concentration of them was around Hoover Bay.

“That’s odd,” Retsler said.

“That’s what I thought,” Eddie said, pointing to them. “And they’re mostly from the last year or so. The rest’re what you’d expect, and if I’d had time, I’d’ve marked ’em by month too. Outside the bay, most of the animals died between May and September.”

“Tourists.”

“Sicko, psycho kids, probably brought to the beach because there’s nothing for them to tear up, or so the parents think.”

That was one of the things Retsler hated the most about summer, the teenagers who invaded from other towns. After they saw the single movie playing at the Bijou, shopped at all the stores, and found out that the casino just outside of town really did enforce its 18 and above rule, they turned to vandalism or small acts of terror to take up their time.

“What about the others?” Retsler asked.

“Late ’96, spaced about a month apart. Been escalating since October. That dog you found tied to the river piling was only two weeks ago, and the cats a week before that.”

“You forgot the horse,” Retsler said.

“Horse?”

“You know, Draytons’ new mare, the one they’d bought their daughter for Christmas.”

“Oh, yeah,” Eddie said, and grimaced in distaste. “It’s not down here as a killing.”

“It should have been,” Retsler said. “The vet had to put her down.” The little girl had been heartbroken, and convinced, somehow, that it was her fault. The parents had promised her a new horse, but she had refused, saying she couldn’t be sure it would be safe. The parents had looked at Retsler then, perhaps wanting him to reassure her, but he said nothing. He wasn’t sure the family would be safe on hillside retreat, with its two-mile long road and 360-degree view of the ocean and the river. He’d thought the horse incident particularly cruel and had thought perhaps it had been directed at the Draytons.

Now he wasn’t so sure. They lived awfully close to Hoover Bay, and a horse wasn’t a dog or a seal pup. Horses had an amazing amount of strength.

Had the horse been the killer’s attempt to ratchet up the pleasure, only to be thwarted? Maybe that’s why the killer went after something like a seal pup, something so helpless and vulnerable and cute that it would be easy to kill.

A shiver ran through Retsler. He didn’t like what was loose in his little town.

***

Denne showed up three hours later. He was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt over a pair of chinos. His deck shoes were mottled and ruined, and he wore no socks. Retsler had seen the outfit before. It was the one Denne kept at his office and used only when something at a crime scene made him leave his regular clothes behind.

Denne’s blond hair was ruffled and his mouth a thin line. He pulled open the door, nodded to Eddie, and then came into Retsler’s office without knocking.

Retsler had just finished going through the reports. Nothing from the area of the beach where they had found the seal pup. He would have expected something to come from the nearby hotels, perhaps, someone seeing the skinning of the pup or getting upset by the conduct of the beer drinkers. He was surprised no one had complained about the smell until that afternoon.

Denne sat in the chair before Retsler’s desk. Even though he was wearing his grubbiest clothes, Denne’s pants still had a crease, and even his sweatshirt looked pressed.

“If you can call two a pattern,” Denne said without preamble, “we’ve got one.”

“Looks like a different MO to me,” Retsler said. He’d had all afternoon to think about it. “Dog tortured to death, left on a stake beneath the Dee River Bridge. Pup’s skinned and burned on the beach. All those beer cans. I’m thinking a bunch of drunk kids got carried away—”

“Whoever skinned that pup was an expert,” Denne said. “The flesh was clean in the unburned areas. And the pup bled. It was alive, at least for part of it. But that isn’t the clincher.”

Retsler folded his hands over the report. He hadn’t wanted to hear that the pup was alive. He hated some of the things this profession made him think about.

“The clincher is the knife itself. It’s one of those thin serrated knives, made especially for that sort of work. Around here, folks usually use knives like that on deer or elk. It’s got a slight nick in the blade. It leaves an identifiable mark. The dog and the pup had it. If I’d thought to keep those cats, I bet they’d have had it too.”

Retsler sighed. Apparently Denne took that for disappointment because he added, “If I were dealing with human deaths here, I could make a case for a serial killer based on the knife evidence alone.”

“What else have you got?”

“Some fibers. A pretty good print, in blood, on the body itself.”

“Good,” Retsler said. “That’s a start. With that, and the cans, we might be able to find something.”

“Hope so.” Denne stood, then paused as if he had a thought. “There’s one more thing. It may be nothing, or it might be everything.”

“What?” Retsler asked.

“Did you find the pelt?”

Retsler shook his head. “I assumed it got burned.”

“No. There was no fur in the fire at all, and they were too far from the water line for it to have been swept away with the tide.”

“I’d better get someone to comb the beach, then,” Retsler said.

“Yeah,” Denne said. “But I don’t think you’ll find anything.”

Retsler met his gaze. “You think our friend is selling the pelts?”

“Probably not. I have a hunch we’re dealing with someone young here.”

Retsler felt himself go cold. “Trophy hunter.”

Denne nodded. “I suspected it with the dog, and I bet, if I looked at your report on the cats, I could find something too.”

“The horse’s mane,” Retsler murmured.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing,” Retsler said.

“If you don’t find that pelt,” Denne said, “I’d bet every dime I’ve got that our killer still has it.”

“Should make it easier to convict someone.”

“On what? Animal cruelty?” Denne said. “Seems minor for this kind of offense.”

Retsler agreed, but felt the day’s frustration fill him. “What am I supposed to charge him with? Prospective serial killing?”

“Wish you could,” Denne said.

“We’ll get the state involved,” Retsler said. “Maybe they’ll have ideas.”

“They’ll think we’re a small town with too much time on our hands.”

“Maybe they would have with the dog or the horse,” Retsler said. “But we’re dealing with a seal pup. That makes these TV news reporters sit up and beg.”

“Think twice before you invite those vultures here,” Denne said. “They’ll mess up the entire case.”

“I’ll wait,” Retsler said, “until I have something that’ll stick.”

Denne nodded. “I’ll give you all the help I can.”

Retsler smiled. “You’ve already given me plenty.”

***

The weekend wasn’t as calm as Retsler would have liked. Two major traffic accidents on 101 backed traffic for hours, and caused several more citations. A suspicious fire downtown in one of Whale Rocks failing seasonal businesses had Retsler calling in a state arson team. A Saturday night bar fight got out of control and spilled into the street, forcing Retsler to call his entire team to help quell the violence. He wasn’t able to think about seal pups and animal mutilations until he arrived at work at eight a.m. Monday morning, sleep-deprived, bruised, and more thankful than he cared to admit that all the tourists had finally gone home.

Lucy was already at her desk, an unlit cigar in her mouth. She had curly gray hair and a military manner that her grandmotherly face somehow softened. Retsler had known her since he was a boy, and sometimes she still made him feel like that boy. He really didn’t want to cross her.

She had two tall cups from Java Joes on her desk. As he passed, she handed him one. He turned to her in surprise. She had made it clear, when he became chief, that she didn’t do windows or coffee.

“What’s this for?”

“I figure you haven’t gotten no rest since New Year’s Eve. Caffeine won’t cure it, but it’ll cover it up.”

He grinned at her. “You’re a lifesaver, Lucy.”

She frowned. “Don’t go ruining my reputation.”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

“Good,” she said. Then she leaned back in her chair. “You got a woman in your office.”

He glanced over, surprised he had missed it. Maria Selvado was sitting primly in the chair in front of his desk, a vinyl purse clutched to her white sweater. Her coat hung over the back of the chair, and she wore what appeared to be a very cheap pair of boots beneath her faded jeans.

“How long’s she been here?”

“Half hour or so. I told her you don’t normally come in until ten.”

“Lucy!”

Lucy chuckled. “Well, I figured if you got in any earlier than ten, she’d think you were good at your job.”

“I am good at my job.”

“Just goes to show,” Lucy said. Then she raised an eyebrow at him. “And if you let that Eddie dig in my files again, so help me God, I’ll pour that coffee down your back.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

This time it was Retsler who chuckled as he headed to his office. Maria Selvado turned her face toward him. She looked even more exotic in the artificial light. “Chief,” she said in greeting.

“Dan,” he corrected.

She nodded. He sat behind his desk. She leaned forward, still clutching that purse. “I came for an update.”

“I can’t tell you much,” he said. “We know that the pup’s death is part of a pattern, and we are working on that angle. We have some leads—”

“A pattern?” she murmured.

He stopped, frowning. She seemed disturbed by his words. “Yes. There have been other animals killed in the same area—”

“But not other pups.”

“Not that we know of.”

She let out a small breath. The news seemed to relieve her. “But you have nothing on the killer.”

“Not yet.”

She raised those liquid eyes to his, and he thought he saw accusation in them. He parted his hands defensively, and then shook his head a little. He didn’t have to defend himself to anyone.

But he did say, because he felt she needed to know, “We don’t have much of a lab facility here. We’ve sent several items to the State Crime Lab. We should hear later today.”

She bit her lower lip. “You’ll keep me informed.”

“If I know where I can find you.”

“I’m at the Sandcastle.”

He shuddered. He couldn’t help it. Someone bought the land a year ago, and in that time tore down the old hotel. The new one had the look of the old—once one of the Coast’s premiere resorts—and people from all over the world had flocked to it in the last few days of the summer. But he had memories of the Sandcastle, memories of finding intact bodies before it, memories of unusual goings-on that dated to his boyhood—talk of ghosts and kelpies and strange creatures that emerged from the sea.

She looked amused. His reaction must have been visible. “They’ve remodeled,” she said. “It’s quite nice.”

“I have no doubt.”

She smiled and stood, her movements fluid and graceful. “Thank you for cooperating with me, Chief.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and waited for her to leave before he shut his office door.

***

That night, Lucy chose the dinner spot and, as always, she picked the False Colors. It was a pirate-themed bar just off 101, but more locals went there than tourists. The sea chanties, played low, the fireplace that burned real wood, the ropes and life rings that came from real ships played to the out-of-towners, but most people who came to the coast brought their families. The skull and crossbones that decorated most corners, the human skulls on the mantel, the tales of death and murder framed on the walls were not the best atmosphere for children. So tourists usually came once and left, allowing the locals to enjoy the excellent food and the even better bar.

Retsler ordered his usual, a cutely named fish and chips entree that came with a large salad and a double order of bread. He got a Rogue Ale with that, and planned to get a huge dessert, thinking that the combination might allow him to go home and go to sleep at nine p.m.

Lucy had the fisherman’s platter, a meal three times the size of Retsler’s, and he knew by the end of the evening, she would have eaten all of it. After a few minutes, Eddie joined them.

He was still in uniform, and as he sat down, June the waitress scurried over. “You know Jeff don’t like it when you guys come in your blues,” she said in a half whisper.

“What’s he going to do, call the cops?” Lucy asked and then smiled, a grandmother with fangs.

“It’s just he doesn’t think the presence of police adds to the atmosphere.”

“He’s afraid the real pirates will stop patronizing the place,” Lucy said and chuckled.

“It’s okay,” Eddie said. “I won’t do it again. It’s just I had to talk to Dan and I didn’t have time to change.”

“Tell Jeff it’s January 4th and the tourists went home, not that they’re going to be in here anyway,” Dan said. “And tell him he can chase his regulars away if he wants, but this is the slow season and it probably wouldn’t be wise.”

June bobbed her head. “It wasn’t from me, you know. It’s just that Jeff—”

“Is delusional.” Lucy picked up a crab leg and broke it in half. “We know.”

June flushed. “You want something, Eddie?”

“Burger and fries and a diet.”

June left and Eddie leaned forward. “I’ve got a couple of things on that seal pup killing,” he said softly, even though there were no other patrons within hearing range. “Okay to tell you here?”

Sometimes Retsler frowned on discussing work at the False Colors. But that was usually in the summer, when the place was packed with first-timers who really didn’t need tales of car crashes and children crushed by driftwood logs as an accompaniment to their meals.

Retsler picked up a fry. “Let’s hear it.”

Any news would be good news. Retsler expected a visit the next morning from Maria Selvado, and he hadn’t heard from the crime lab yet. He supposed he could give her some information from Denne’s autopsy of the pup, but even someone as involved as Selvado probably didn’t want to hear about knife serrations and the fact that the pup had been skinned alive.

Retsler winced at the memory.

“You okay?” Eddie asked.

Retsler nodded. Then the main door opened, and Denne walked in. Retsler looked up. Denne’s wife had expressly forbidden him from coming here. She had discovered, through small-town gossip probably, that twice before he had shown up here to discuss a case, and had demanded that he not disgrace the family by showing his face in the False Colors again.

Yet there he was, in a charcoal-colored silk suit with a sterling silver pocket watch attached to a fob on the outside. His blond hair had been slicked back, and his aesthetic face looked almost haunted.

“She’s pushing him too hard,” Lucy murmured. “He’s drifting over to the other side.”

Retsler started, then considered the evidence: the truck, the clothes Denne had worn home on New Years, and now the appearance at the False Colors. Denne was abandoning his gated community for the peasants who ran this small town.

Eddie sighed. “You want to hear this or not?”

“Let’s wait for Hamilton,” Retsler said as he waved. Denne smiled—he never quite grinned—and walked down the worn stairs into the main dining area. As he did, he stopped June and ordered, then took the only empty chair at the table.

“Eddie,” Retsler said, “was about to tell us news on our seal pup.”

“Really?” Denne removed his suit coat and hung it on the back of the chair.

Then he rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt, revealing muscular forearms. With his left hand, he loosened his tie, and pulled it off. The entire group was watching him with astonishment. Retsler could feel his own mouth open in surprise.

Denne raised his eyebrows. “Don’t let me stop you, Eddie.”

“Um, yeah.” Eddie shot Denne a slightly perplexed look, then said, “I been having conversations all day, casual ones, you know.”

Retsler did know. One of the strengths of Whale Rock was its citizens’ willingness to discuss anything if approached properly by someone they knew. A glance at the ocean, a mention of the dead pup, and a softly worded query about something related often got a glut of information.

“And I didn’t get nothing on anyone selling pelts.”

“I called fifteen different departments,” Lucy said as she stabbed a scallop with her fork, “and no one in the entire State of Oregon has heard of anyone poaching seals.”

“I asked her to. Hope you don’t mind, boss,” Eddie said.

A year ago, Eddie never would have taken that kind of initiative. “I gave you the legwork of the investigation,” Retsler said. “You can divide it up how you want.”

June brought a longneck for Eddie and an Alaskan Amber for Denne. Retsler looked at him in surprise, but Denne didn’t seem to notice. Lucy did, however, and winked.

“Then what did you need to tell me?” Retsler asked when June left.

“You remember when they tore down the Sandcastle to make way for the new version?”

“A mistake if there ever was one,” Denne said. “You do realize the hotel is on the beach.”

They all looked at him. Building on the beaches—on the sand—was against the law in Oregon.

“How’d that happen?” Retsler said.

“You know the Planning Commission.” Denne took a sip of the amber and looked like a man who had just had the most sublime experience of his life.

“It’s a state law,” Lucy said.

Denne raised his eyebrows. “The Sandcastle Hotel predates the law. The Commission claimed they couldn’t do anything because it grandfathers in.”

“How much did Roman Taylor pay them?” Retsler asked.

“Pay them? Kickbacks, in our small town? Impossible.” Denne leaned back. “Just a sidebar. Didn’t mean to derail you, Eddie.”

Eddie grunted, and took a sip out of his longneck. “Anyway,” he said, “when they were bulldozing the Sandcastle, they found an open area underneath it. There was all kinds of junk under there, old watches, gold coins, shiny stuff. Some of it wasn’t worth much, but some of it was worth a lot, and Taylor said he got it, because he bought the property. Nobody fought him about it and nobody tried to trace it.”

“And, not surprisingly, nobody thought to call us,” Retsler said.

Eddie nodded, meeting his gaze. “Ain’t it amazing how some things just don’t make it to our attention until we can’t do nothing about them.”

“So what do the shiny things have to do with this investigation?” Lucy asked.

“Well, in there was a pile of fur, all sleek and shiny. Turns out it was seal pelts—about twenty of them. Just beautiful things. I guess Taylor’s the kind of guy who hangs deer heads on the walls and he was really excited about them pelts. He took them home.”

Retsler whistled. “This was what? Last January?”

“Yep,” Eddie said. “And that’s not all. Various folks have come up asking for them seal pelts, even though the only people who knew about them were the digging crew and Taylor. Taylor won’t talk to anybody about them.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Lucy said.

June set down Eddie’s hamburger, and placed a double cheeseburger—an item the False Colors proudly called its Gut Blaster—in front of Denne. Retsler couldn’t resist.

“Your wife isn’t going to be too happy when you come home smelling of hot sauce, jalapeños, and onions.”

Denne shrugged. “The woman’s got to learn to calm down.”

This time, Eddie was the one who raised his eyebrows. He picked up the catsup and proceeded to pour it all over his food. “I got one more thing to tell you about them pelts,” he said. “The latest person who’s come to inquire about them is Maria Selvado. She’s been after Taylor since the first of December, and she’s got the Marine Science Center behind her. Guess they’re doing some sort of seal study or something, and the pelts would be really useful. They’re even offering to pay him. But he won’t meet with her. She says she’s not leaving until he does.”

“Our Miss Selvado gets around,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “She even went up to his house on the Dee. Got real mad when she saw how he’s displaying the pelts. Guess he’s got them in one of those wall-sized glass cases beside his fireplace. He came to the door and she was yelling something about pins ruining the fur, or something. Anyway, he threw her off the porch, damn near landed her in the river. She hasn’t been up there since.”

“But there was a break-in,” Retsler said.

“Thwarted break-in,” Lucy said. “The alarm kicked on with the sirens and all the lights, remember?”

“And tiny footprints, woman-sized, in the mud beside the window on the fireplace side of the house. Passionate woman,” Retsler said.

“Mystery woman,” Denne said. “She called me, asking if she could have the pup’s body when I was through with it, said she wanted it for the Science Center. I offered to drive it over there for her—I mean, who wants a corpse in your car if you can help it?—and she turned me down. That made me suspicious, so I called the Science Center.”

“And they’d never heard of her,” Lucy said, her eyes sparkling as they always did when the story started getting juicy.

“Oh, they’d heard of her all right. But she hadn’t worked for them for six months. Seems that she broke into the Oregon Coast Aquarium last summer, and was going to liberate the seals. Security stopped her before she made it to the outdoor pen, but the Aquarium offered not to press charges—which would have embarrassed the Science Center—if she promised to leave Newport. She did.”

“And came here?” Retsler asked. “That seems odd to me. We’re not that far from Newport.”

Denne nodded. “The Science Center is none too happy that she’s still representing herself as part of their staff. Not that she was ever staff-staff anyway. She was one of the student projects, interns or whatever, that they get coming through. But they still don’t want their name connected to hers.”

“And they have no interest in the seal pelts?” Retsler asked.

“None,” Denne said.

Lucy nodded. “Selkies,” she said.

All three of them turned to her. She grinned and shrugged. “Come on,” she said. “We have no secrets between us. We are talking Whale Rock, aren’t we?”

“Silkies?” Eddie asked.

“Selkies,” Retsler said. He’d been boning up on his sea-faring lore since the last strange encounter. “They look like seals in the sea, but when they come on shore and shed their skin, they look human.”

“Oh, God,” Eddie said.

“But don’t they usually come looking for love?” Denne asked. “Aren’t they supposed to mate with human women, leave them pregnant, and return to the sea?”

“You’ve been reading too many Celtic stories,” Lucy said. “That may have been true hundreds of years ago. But I think selkies are more sophisticated than that.”

“Sophisticated?” Denne placed his chin on the palm of his hand and looked at her. “Do you mean they’re sending their children ashore in search of a better education?”

“You may mock me, young man, but think about it. What better way to find out about the things that threaten your people than to study those things?”

Retsler was silent. A lot threatened the seal population, which had been thinning in recent years. Some blamed oil spills farther up the coast, others blamed changes in commercial fishing laws, and still others blamed things like tourists taking pups off the beaches. Whatever the cause, there were fewer seals in the last few years than there had been in a long time.

“That seal pup,” Denne said, “was 100 percent seal. There was nothing magical about it.”

“The myths say that the smaller seals—like the common seal—belong entirely to the animal world, but the larger seals, like the gray, the great, and the crested, can be selkie folk.” Lucy pushed her plate aside. “How else do you explain the clean, unrotted pelts, found among all that shiny stuff, as Eddie calls it. It was a nest, a place to hide wealth that enabled them to trade in Whale Rock.”

Retsler put aside the remains of his fish and chips. “So?” he asked. “We have a bunch of selkies in human form walking around Whale Rock?”

“Or in the sea without their pelts. It’s probably hazardous to their health.” Lucy shook her head. “A year’s a long time.”

“What does this have to do with our dead pup?” Denne asked.

“Maybe nothing,” Lucy said, “but selkies do have a kinship with seals. They’re probably not happy about this.”

“You think Maria Selvado is a selkie?” Retsler asked.

“I didn’t say that.” Lucy sniffed loudly. Of course she hadn’t said that. She had implied it, like she often did, and Retsler could ignore her at his own peril.

“Selkies,” Denne mused. “I thought selkies were dangerous.”

“Only if you’re a man in lust,” Retsler said.

“No,” Lucy said. “They are dangerous, if you kill one.”

“What?” Eddie asked, setting down the longneck. “All the other selkies toss their pelts at you?”

“No,” Lucy said. “If you kill one, don’t get its blood in the ocean.”

“Or?” Denne asked.

“Or a storm’ll come up the likes of which you’ve never seen.”

Retsler sighed. “Do you actually believe that, Lucy?”

She met his gaze. There was no twinkle in her gray eyes. “I’ve seen a lot of things, Dan. I don’t disbelieve anything.”

“But you don’t actually believe it.”

“Let me put it this way,” Lucy said. “That myth is not one I’d want to test.”

***

“The language is plain, Retsler.” Roman Taylor was a large man, made to seem even larger by the low ceilings in the second story of his riverside home. He hunched over a rough-hewn log table, made to match the rough edges on the outer walls. The inner walls were smooth and painted white. It was on one of those that a huge case with the pelts gleamed in the morning sunshine. “I bought the Sandcastle Hotel and all its contents. The pelts and the treasures in that room around them were inside the Sandcastle. No one disputes that.”

Retsler stared at the deed before him. Apparently he stared too long because Taylor shifted from one foot to another.

The language was clear. Taylor did own the pelts and there was nothing Retsler could do about it.

“Maybe you should show this to the city attorney,” Taylor said. “Then maybe people’ll leave me alone.”

“They’ll leave you alone now,” Retsler said. “Sorry to bother you.”

Taylor nodded once at the apology. Then he glanced at the case. “That woman’s crazy, you know. If I could find a way to get her out of my hotel I would. If you could think of something, I’d be forever in your debt.”

“Has she broken any laws, Mr. Taylor?”

“I’d be the first to scream if she did.” He walked over to the case. “She says the seals that had these pelts are still alive, and they need them. Isn’t that nuts? You can’t skin an animal like this and have the animal live.”

“Can I see one?” Retsler asked.

Taylor opened the case. The glass swung open, and the scent of fur and an animal musk filled the room. “Come here.”

Retsler obliged. The pelts glistened as if they were still wet, but there was a dullness that was starting to appear around their edges.

Taylor picked up a corner of the nearest fur. “See that?” he asked. “Best work I’ve ever seen. Not a trace of flesh, no knife marks. Just the fur. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Beautiful wasn’t a word that Retsler would have used, but he nodded anyway.

“Hey, Dad!”

Both men turned. A teenage boy stood in the stairwell, face flushing when he saw Retsler.

“Didn’t know you had company,” the boy said.

“The chief’s just leaving.”

The boy grunted. He stood perfectly still as if movement weren’t allowed. “Why’re you showing him the pelts?”

Something in the question made Retsler look at the boy. The boy’s eyes were bright, almost too bright. And cold. So cold that Retsler felt a chill run through him.

“He’d heard about them, that’s all,” Taylor said.

“Dad thinks those pelts are the real thing,” the boy said, his chin raised in something of a challenge.

Retsler became completely still. “You don’t?”

“I think they’re fake. I think he should get them checked.”

“Why?” Retsler asked.

“Because I don’t care how good you are, you can’t remove a pelt making a single cut.”

“Hmm,” Retsler said. “Have you tried?”

“He hunts with me sometimes,” Taylor said too fast. “Don’t you, Michael?”

“We’ve never hunted together in our lives. My father never pays attention to me.” The boy tilted his head, eyeing Retsler speculatively. “You ever spend New Year’s Eve on the beach, chief?”

Retsler didn’t answer. Taylor’s face flushed.

“It’s amazing what people’ll burn—”

“Michael!” Taylor said.

The boy grinned and shrugged, as if he had just been making conversation. “Nice seeing you. Chief.”

And then he walked down the stairs. Retsler’s entire body had turned numb. He had expected a teenager, but not one that would challenge him. Although he had heard stories about Michael Taylor for the last year. A teacher at the high school had asked how to deal with a boy who seemed to love violence. A female student filed a complaint, only to withdraw it a day later.

Retsler debated for a moment whether or not he should follow, whether or not he should search the boy’s room, and then decided the boy wouldn’t issue a challenge like that if he expected to get caught. Better to take it slow, build a case the right way. Maybe Retsler could even talk to Taylor, convince him to send the boy to a hospital where he could get help.

“Sorry about that,” Taylor was saying. “He’s at that age when no adult is worth his time.”

Retsler stared at him. Taylor’s flush deepened. “You know we found a skinned pup on the beach New Year’s Day.”

“No,” Taylor said. “I hadn’t. It’s amazing what people will do.”

“Isn’t it?” Retsler asked. He looked at the case again. “How many of these did you find?”

“Twenty,” Taylor said. “And that’s how many are there.”

Retsler silently counted to himself. Twenty. If the other pelt was here, it was somewhere else. “Maybe I should take a peek at your son’s room.”

“Not without a warrant,” Taylor said.

Retsler nodded. It played out just as he expected. He shrugged, like the boy had, then he thanked Taylor for his time, and left the house.

The river was low here, sixty feet down the bank, and sparkling in the bright sunshine. Taylor had bought the land and built the house the year before he had bought the Sandcastle. Lucy said that Taylor had spent that year getting on the good side of the Planning Commission. Lucy would know.

The pelts were disturbing, the boy more so. But Taylor had a legal right to the pelts, and Retsler would have to work hard to make anything more than a misdemeanor stick on the boy. Taylor had more money than God, which meant that he could afford the biggest lawyers in the country.

Retsler was suddenly walking into the big leagues, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to play the game.

***

The State Crime Lab could find no match on the fingerprints, nor did they have anything to say about the requests from Whale Rock. They apologized profusely, but perfunctorily, and probably, when they got off the phone, chuckled at the things that passed for important in small towns.

Retsler didn’t care. He had other things to check. Lucy had called Seavy County Deeds and Records, and had found the date of Taylor’s home purchase. It was one month before the animal mutilations started near Hoover Bay. Now she was checking with the local police department in Taylor’s previous home in San Jose, hoping to find another pattern.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. He also had a call in to an old friend at the FBI who might have a few ideas on how to proceed in a case as delicate, and insubstantial, as this one. Animal deaths and mutilations were bad enough, but, truth be told, they weren’t what Retsler was really worried about. What worried him the most were the coldness of that boy’s eyes, and the possibility—make that the probability—of what the boy would become.

Retsler had all that on his mind as he drove to the Sandcastle. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to see Maria Selvado, but he knew he probably should.

Her room was on the top floor of the Sandcastle Hotel. Like all of the rooms, it had double glass doors on the ocean side that opened onto an extra-long balcony. When she led Retsler onto it, it made him feel as if he were standing over the water. He supposed, in high tide, that he would be. The balconies hung over the concrete breaker that protected the hotel from high surf—another illegal measure grandfathered in by the Planning Commission. Retsler had hated the look from the ground, but he had to admit that, from the balconies themselves, the view was spectacular.

Selvado had let him in, no questions asked. That she had been in her room on such a beautiful afternoon, neither of them mentioned. The room itself was spectacular. The door opened into a hallway which led to a large bathroom, passed a king-sized bedroom, and opened into a well-apportioned sitting room filled with antiques and facing a marble fireplace. The ubiquitous television was hidden in a wall unit that still looked suspiciously out of place. It was also covered with dust.

The ocean breeze had a trace of mist. Selvado raised her face to it as if it gave her life. She was obviously waiting for him to speak.

He cleared his throat. “I spoke to Roman Taylor today about the pelts.”

She turned, stunned.

“He showed me the deed. They’re clearly his.”

“They have nothing to do with him,” she said fiercely. “They don’t belong to him.”

“By law they do.”

She bit her lip and turned away. “The law is wrong.”

“The law is what we have, Ms. Selvado. It may not be right all the time, it may not make things easy, but it’s what we have.”

She shook her head. “It’s not enough.”

He knew that. He leaned on the balcony railing, and dangled his arms over the edge. This next part he did partly because he knew he had made her angry, and he agreed with Taylor: she had to leave Whale Rock. She was too unpredictable. Retsler was afraid she would try to break into Taylor’s house again. If she got near that teenage boy, her own life might be in danger.

“I’ve also learned that you’re presenting yourself as an employee of the Marine Science Center, and asking for privileges due to your position.”

“I am—”

“You were,” he said. “I found out about the dismissal. You’re bordering on fraud, Ms. Selvado. I’ll look at your actions as a simple misunderstanding right now, but any more of it, and I’ll have to inform the Newport police.”

She whirled toward him, her liquid eyes full of fire. There was a power to her, like the sea the day before a storm. “You wouldn’t.”

“I have to, Ms. Selvado.”

“Taylor put you up to this.”

“No.” Retsler sighed. He would give her this next because he had to give her something, and then he would ask her to leave. “I’m dealing with Taylor in my own fashion. I’m trying to make a case against his son. I’m pretty sure the boy is the one who slaughtered that pup.”

“Pretty sure?”

He held out his hands. “Meaning I’m convinced the boy’s the one we want. I simply have to prove it. So if you’ll leave me to my work, maybe I’ll be able to help you.”

“Bargain the boy’s freedom for the pelts?”

“No,” Retsler said. “I think the boy’s too dangerous for that.”

“Then what?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he said, and felt the emptiness of his promise. “But I’ll do the best I can.”

“By asking me to leave town?” she asked.

“It’s a start,” he said.

“For you perhaps.” Then she paused. The ocean was a deep clear blue. The sunshine this early in January was unusual, and welcome. She stared at it as if it gave her an idea. “And maybe for me as well.”

***

The next morning brought a spate of strange calls: boats all over the coastline and up the river had been damaged, not badly enough to ruin them, but enough to prevent anyone from going on the ocean that day. At a dock near Hoover Village, one old fisherman claimed he saw a group of seals nudging a hole in the hull of his boat, then moving to his neighbor’s boat at the next mooring. Retsler had to call his entire staff in to meet the workload of examining each and every boat, and Lucy had the volunteer firemen help as well.

Retsler was so busy, he missed what later turned out to be the most important calls of the day.

Hotel patrons of the Sandcastle lit up the emergency lines with a gruesome tale: a dark-haired woman, bleeding from both arms, dove off her balcony into the sea.

When Retsler finally got the page, he knew at once who had died. Maria Selvado. And he had felt a chill. He went over to the Sandcastle, and demanded to be let into her room.

The door was locked from the inside. A bloody knife sat on the back of the toilet. The bathroom floor was covered with blood. The trail led to the balcony. There was only one set of footprints—women’s size six, flat footed (no arch) with webs between the toes. They ended at the railing, although there were bloody handprints on the iron, and another splotch of blood on the top of the concrete breaker.

The body below was gone, taken by the rising tide, returned to the sea.

On the fireplace mantel was a note addressed to Retsler. It said, simply: When the laws of man fail, we rely on the laws of God. And it was signed with an M.

***

The storm came an hour later, at high tide. Intense and furious, it concentrated on Hoover Bay, the Dee River, and Whale Rock. The rest of the coast had delicious sun and a perfect January day. In Whale Rock, sustained winds of 100 miles per hour ripped the roof off a gas station, tore down several signs, and knocked out power to half the town. Waves crossed the concrete breaker and smashed into the Sandcastle Hotel, destroying it as if it were made of paper.

Retsler had ordered an emergency evacuation of all low-lying areas, even though the National Weather Service swore that the satellite pictures showed no storm system in the vicinity. He had the radio and TV stations broadcast warnings, ordering everyone to high ground, to places that could survive winds, to places of safety. And because he was trusted, the town listened.

Someone later said that the storm would have caused a lot more destruction if it weren’t for Retsler’s clear thinking. Later they would call him a hero because he had saved hundreds of lives. That only two were lost in a freak storm, the governor would say, was miraculous. But Retsler knew better. He knew, the moment he saw the blood, how he had failed.

***

Denne stood, a shadow in the growing darkness. He picked up the McDonald’s bag and shoved his Styrofoam cup into it. Then he walked around the boat to Retsler.

“You’ve ruined those clothes,” Retsler said, avoiding, knowing that he was avoiding. He shut off his flashlight, listening to the calm ocean in the distance, the gurgle of the river behind him. In the darkness, the cloying stink of the mud was almost overpowering. “The wife’ll be mad.”

“The wife isn’t entitled to an opinion anymore,” Denne said. “New Year’s resolution.”

“You can’t stop a woman from having an opinion.”

“You can when you move out.” Denne turned on his own flashlight. The beam illuminated the mud before them, and the footprints that led up to the Taylor’s log house. He put a hand on Retsler’s back. “You can’t avoid this forever, Danny.”

“I’m no sure I want to see this in the dark.”

“It won’t be any better in the light.”

Denne led the way down the path that, twenty-four hours before, had been covered with greenery and winter flowers. He mounted the stairs to the main level.

The windows were gone, the door off its hinges. The water damage was so severe that the rough-hewn logs looked as if they’d been polished smooth.

Denne ducked inside. He shone a light toward the fireplace. It took a moment for Retsler’s eyes to adjust. The light was reflecting off the glass on the case. He stepped away from the beam and peered inside.

Roman Taylor had been crammed into the square space, his arms and legs held in place by some wickedly tight knots. It didn’t take a degree in forensic medicine to know that the man had been alive when he had been tied down. The water mark was two inches below the ceiling, and there was mud in the bottom of the case.

Mercifully, Denne moved the light. Retsler didn’t use his.

“I’ll photograph all of this tomorrow,” Denne said.

“There’s no need,” Retsler said. “He drowned.”

Denne looked sharply at him.

Retsler shrugged. “Who am I going to charge?”

“You might want to wait until you see the rest.” Denne led him down the stairs into the daylight basement. In the corner, someone had stuck a log into the floor. It looked like one of the mooring posts that littered the river. On it, Taylor’s son Michael—or what was left of him—stared balefully at them.

Retsler swallowed hard to keep down the bile. He recognized the position—recognized everything, in fact, right down to the expression on Michael’s face.

The dog. That was how they had found the dog.

Denne raised his flashlight beam. It caught on a knife stuck into the pole. The knife was serrated and used for gutting animals. The handle was ivory, and engraved on it, was this: Michael Taylor. Happy 13th Birthday. Love, Dad.

“Is it our knife?” Retsler asked.

“No doubt about it,” Denne said.

Retsler closed his eyes. He would have had the proof he needed after all. Damn him for talking to Selvado. Damn him and his worries about a conviction. Damn him, and the lack of respect he had for his own abilities.

“Of course,” Denne said slowly, “any good lawyer could make hash of a case based on one single knife.”

“Really?” Retsler asked.

“I think so,” Denne said. He took one more glance at the body. “And I don’t think I was alone in that belief.”

“Millions of dollars in damage,” Retsler said. “Lives ruined. Two deaths. Because of me and my mouth.”

“You didn’t start this,” Denne said.

“But I should have ended it,” Retsler said. He sighed and sloshed his way back to the stairs. “Next time, I trust Lucy.”

“Next time?” Denne asked, following him. “Let’s hope to God there is no next time.”

But there would be, Retsler knew. As long as Whale Rock was here, as long as strange things happened, there would be another clash between the humans and the strange creatures that lived in the sea. He only hoped that the next time, he would try some cooperation, maybe learn how to bend the laws of man, so that no one had to rely on the laws of God.

____________________________________________

“Strange Creatures” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Love Kris’s series stories, like Seavy County? Support her latest Kickstarter containing 50 stories from her different series – Go here now to check it out! 

Strange Creatures

Copyright © 2014 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Earth, Air, Fire, Water, edited by Margaret Weis, DAW, November, 1999
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2014 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Artalis/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

 

In Mothers and Sons, a mother and son, estranged for years, must grapple with the…

The post Spotlight on “Mothers and Sons” by Adam Haslett appeared first on LitStack.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephanie Gillis is a vlogger, writer, dog trainer, and dinosaur-enthusiast living in Colorado with a very load and obnoxious parrot. She has two Bachelor's degrees in Linguistics and Japanese. When she's not staring at a bright white computer screen for hours on end you may be able to spot her in her natural habitat digging through thrift stores or seeing movies at ridiculously early hours of the morning. If seen in public, approach with caution, puppies, and musical song lyrics.
Find Stephanie online: website
The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids links: Amazon, Goodreads
CHELS
The Humane Society for Creatures and Cryptids is definitely on the more cosy side of the fantasy genre, perfect for these longer nights. Following three sisters and a new girl in town, I feel as though the writing in this book gives a well rounded view of the plot and how it is impacting each character. 
I enjoyed getting to know each of the Lambros sisters who are so different in personality that it makes the perspectives vastly different and memorable. The writing style felt cosy to me, introducing the plot and the characters as the book unfolds. I would recommend this one to anyone who loves to see romances develop over the course of a book while learning about magical creatures through fact file type breakdowns.
ESMAY

Cozy fantasy meets small-town drama meets contemporary (queer) romance meets suspense thriller in The Humane Society of Creatures & Cryptids; it might sound like a lot, but somehow Stephanie Gillis just makes it work and pulls off her vision for this genre blendy gem with effortless grace.

Now, for the first half of this book, the entire plot is essentially: inner turmoil and interpersonal drama. And let me tell you, I was eating it up. We follow the three Lambros sisters, Melpomene, Calliope and Thalia, as they just go about their normal daily lives. You know, very normally taking care of all kinds of magical creatures while trying to navigate their own personal problems and keeping the suspicious town’s folk of Pandora in the dark about the goings-on in their old secluded house in the woods.

To me, each sister had a super distinct voice that completely fit with their age/personality, and I loved how they were all allowed to be so beautifully and relatably flawed and messy. Whether it was Mel’s struggles to balance her own happiness with her demanding role as caretaker of the family, Calliope’s mysteriously powerful bond with the magical creatures and her tragic mental battles, or Thalia’s amusingly wayward nature and high school drama, I just connected and sympathised so deeply with them all. And then add to that the fourth POV of Asha, a new girl in town who befriends Thalia, whose curious outsider perspective added a whole new fresh dimension to the story that added so many unexpected layers of fun tension, nuance and complexity.

Moreover, as someone who thrives on digging into the intricacies of all kinds of interpersonal relationships in stories, I loved how much quiet time we got to just explore all the complicated feelings between the sisters as they go from merely living alongside each other to truly connecting and bonding again for the first time in years. And it wasn't just the complex sisterly dynamic that had me glued to the page, but also the tenuous relationship with their absent mother and the development of the wholesome romances that start to blossom in each of the sisters’ lives. Not to mention, all the lively, quirky side characters (both the human and non-human ones) really get their time to shine, and I would very much like to know where I can get myself some saberwolves or Bigfoot Harriët, please and thank you!

Now, I do have to admit that the slow-burn cozy first half of the book didn’t totally prepare me for the sudden shift into such high-stakes, almost thriller-esque territory as outside forces start to threaten them and the magical creatures. Even though I was deeply emotionally invested at that point and was on the edge of my seat out of concern for all my favourite characters, I just couldn’t help but find the shift in tone slightly jarring. To me, the drastic increase in the pacing made the development of some characters’ personal journeys and their relationships feel a bit too unbelievable for me, and I felt like some heavy topics of trauma, redemption, and vengeful retribution were not handled with the care and nuance they deserve simply for the sake of resolving all the mess in a satisfying and wholesome way.

All that said, those quibbles didn’t hold me back from devouring this book, and ultimately the highs way outweighed the lows for me. I mean, Gillis’ slightly tongue-in-cheek authorial voice is irresistibly entertaining (just look at this killer line: “Yes, Sheriff. Bigfoot is a girl. I’m a lesbian. Can you try to keep your patriarchal misogyny in check for this?”), it features SO much fun and rich magical creature lore (including illustrations!), and it’s just got so much heart that you simply can’t help but be charmed by it all.

In a weird way, The Humane Society of Creatures & Cryptids feels like a uniquely exciting mash-up of the styles of T.J. Klune, Alice Oseman, Emily Henry, and T. Kingfisher to me, while also being completely unlike anything I have ever read. And you better bet I will be coming back for more, because I am quite eager to see what kind of wild shenanigans all these loveable misfits get up to in the next stage of their lives. So, if you like the sound of a fun and feel-good genre blendy story of love, sisterhood, animal conservation, and compassion, then I truly can’t recommend this gem highly enough!

ŁUKASZ

Imagine a world where witches run a magical animal shelter while dodging pitchfork-wielding neighbors, and you’ll have an idea of what The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids is all about. 

The story revolves around the Lambros sisters—Melpomene, Calliope, and Thalia—three women juggling the care of mystical creatures, a deeply suspicious town, and lots of personal baggage. Throw in a sprinkle of cryptids, a dash of generational trauma, and a pinch of sisterly drama, and you’ve got a recipe for a chaotic, but entertaining, tale.

Melpomene is the oldest, and she’s keeping the house (and everyone else) from falling apart with a wrench in one hand and financial accumen in the other. Calliope, the middle child, is the unofficial cryptid whisperer, who battles agoraphobia and a complicated past. And then there’s Thalia, the youngest, who’s desperate to flee small-town life—until a certain new girl, Asha, steals her heart. As if managing their own problems wasn’t enough, the sisters must also face Mr. Underwood, a shady figure who’d like to exploit the creatures and the sisters’ unique connection to them.

There’s a plot and intrigue, but above all, this is a story about family, healing, and the magic of sisterhood, all wrapped up in a cozy yet occasionally tumultuous package. The writing balances humor and heartache; it gives weight to the characters’ struggles but rarely loses its whimsical edge. The cryptids, from Harriet the feminist Bigfoot to other magical beings, are all charming and fun. 

The downsides? Well, it’s a long book, and I felt it could use some serious tightening in places. As mentioned, it feels chaotic in places, meandering in others. Given its coziness, the stakes aren’t that high and to me, it lacked a palpable tension and suspense. Basically, it wasn’t hard to guess most reveals and twists way ahead.

It’s part cozy, part serious, with a dash of romance and some adventure. Perfect for fans of magical creatures, heartfelt stories, and sisterly love. 

OFFICIAL SPFBO REVIEW

It was like this when I got here.

Will testify to this. It absolutely was circumstance, not enemy action.

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Solidarity!

 

Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes #1)by Travis Baldree
What is it about:After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time.
The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success—not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.
If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone.
But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.
What did I think of it:This book has been all over the internet and has been lauded by lots of people, but it took me a while to pick it up as I was a bit wary. Finally I caved.
And this is such a pleasant and fun read!
I loved reading about Viv's attempts to start a coffee shop, and about the people she manages to meet and befriend on the way. It's mostly a fluffy and cozy read about friendship, with just enough obstacles thrown in to keep the story engaging.
If you've played Dungeons and Dragons there's tons of things that you'll recognize, but for people who haven't, this book is a perfectly entertaining and enjoyable read as well. There's a tiny bit of romance, lots of coffee, and good friends.
Definitely a keeper!
Why should you read it:It's fluffy, cozy, and totally enjoyable.
Thoughts on rereading:Still a delight and definitely worth rereading especially when you need a book that's like a warm hug.

And we kick off 2025 with the return of the column that earned me regular gig here at Black Gate. I’m ostensibly the in-house mystery guy around here, though I’m way beyond all over the place. Death in Paradise is a police procedural (it is not, however, a buddy cop show) with a fair amount of humor, and it debuted on BBC1 on October 25, 2011. The show started airing a Christmas special a few years ago, and episode number 109 just aired on December 22, 2024.

The basic premise is that Scotland Yard assigns a DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) to duty on the island of Saint Marie (pronounced ‘San Marie’), located in the Lesser Antilles. Saint Marie was turned over to the British by the French roughly forty years before the show starts. So, it still has a French-Caribbean culture.

There is a four-person police unit, with the DCI (Richard Poole) joined by a local Detective Sergeant (Camille), and two local uniform ‘beat cops’ (Dwayne, and Fidel). There are two other regulars: the female owner of a local bar (Catherine, who is Camille’s mother), and the Police Superintendent (Patterson). Five of the six main characters are island natives, so this is a classic fish-out-of-water scenario.

DCI Richard Poole is played by Ben Miller, who was great as Rowan Atkinson’s competent helper-agent in the Johnny English spoofs (the first one is a classic). Miller refuses to take off his jacket or loosen his tie while barely enduring the heat: Stiff upper lip and appearances and all that. He’s constantly miserable, and I love him in the part.

Episodes are an hour long, and the plots are complex. The fictional Saint Marie is near the real-life archipelago (isn’t that a fun word?) of Guadeloupe, which is where it’s actually filmed. The island and its culture are as much a fixture on the show as the actors are.

MINI SPOILER!!! – Just move down to the next paragraph if you don’t want to learn something about the cast. You have been warned.

This show changes cast members more frequently than the Pittsburgh Steelers win a playoff game (though that ain’t saying much). The four main police characters turn over nearly a dozen times. With one notable exception, the new characters brought in work well. Nine actors have appeared in at least 30 episodes (which is about three-plus seasons). Two more actors should break that mark in 2025. So, you get attached to a character at your own risk.

END SPOILER

I think that this is a terrific police show. The British DCI, the local officers, the island setting – it all works. Seasons are short in the typical British fashion (the idea of a 26-episode season must put British TV-makers in shock). It’s also one of several British dramas that has taken to airing a one-off Christmas episode (sometimes sort of a mini-preview of the upcoming season), and I look forward to this one every year now.

BritBox has all seasons, and I recommend going back to the pilot and watching from the beginning. It’s worth every minute.

HERE BE DRAGONS! (and Spoilers)

If you haven’t seen the first two seasons, and this episode, you should probably stop reading this, if you plan to do so. There’s a major cast change in the opener of this episode. I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. Read on at your peril.

Since the episode is titled Death of a Detective, you might be able to guess what happens. The actor playing the British DI of the moment spends a significant part of their year in Guadalupe, filming. Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole) wanted to be back home in England. It was rumored he would be leaving after season two. The season finale had him escorting a prisoner back to England, and Camille was certain he couldn’t resist remaining there. It looked like he was off the show, but he reappeared at the very end of the episode.

So, I was excited to see him start off the next episode. I thought he would be around for at least one more season. Except, in the first segment, they found him on a chaise on the deck at a college reunion party on the island; with an ice pick in his chest. They killed him off!!! This episode still is a kick in the nuts for me. When they show the body; and there’s a silent, slow-mo montage with the other police there with the body. It’s a really powerful scene.

Now, they set the tone for main characters of the show in the pilot, with two main characters being removed (this wasn’t recasting after testing the pilot – it’s plot). But Poole had been the center of the show for the first two seasons, and I took this as quite a blow.

So we will move on from DCI Richard Poole, but his death scene remains etched in my TV-viewing memory. Don Warrington plays Commissioner Selwyn Patterson. He’s the boss, though he mostly runs things from afar. He sometimes weighs in with the ‘political and social realities’ of things. He’s rather humorless, and he isn’t enthralled with misfit Scotland Yard inspectors, but he’s a good guy overall, if rather stiff.

He comes into the station and we meet Poole’s replacement, DCI Humphrey Goodman, played by Kris Marshall. Humphrey is a different kind of fish out-of-water. He takes awkward to nearly epic levels. His first scene, arriving at the Honore police station in a cab, as the Commissioner and team watch him from the portico, really captures his essence.

There’s a really well-done scene in which he walks over to Richard’s empty desk and says “Uh. This is me, is it?.” It’s set apart, and kind of ‘looks out over’ the rest of the room, including the other three officers’ desks.

He stops and looks back as they watch him. Clearly seeing another DI about to sit at Richard’s desk is raw at this point. The scene is extended for a second or two and it’s quite poignant.

He clears his throat awkwardly a few times (everything about him is awkward, constantly), and instead walks to a small desk at the far side of the room. He sits down and says, “Actually, this will be great.”

The chair clicks down and you can only partially see him behind his bag on the desk. He lifts it back up and sits there…yes, awkwardly. I’m not over-emphasizing this, trust me. The team is clearly not impressed with this introduction.

But we have absolutely captured the essence of Humphrey. You’ve got the awkward part by now. Both physically and we’re guessing, socially (though Richard was reserved British socially inept). He’s thoughtful and not brash. He won’t be aggressively confronting suspects. His good nature is built on throughout this episode. The Commissioner has said that London touts him as a good detective, and we will see about that shortly.

Humphrey is constantly looking in his pockets for some scrap of paper to take notes on. I recall he is given a notebook or has one a time or two, but it simply doesn’t work for him. Early on, he pours the coffee out of a cup, flattens it, and starts taking notes on the cup. It is odd to watch. It’s a little thing, but it’s so him.

Fidel and Dwayne try to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s not easy to do, as Humphrey tries to sit on a ledge at the crime scene and falls out the window while talking!

As the scene ends, with a disapproving look on his face, Dwayne says “Am I seeing things, or did he fall out of the window?”

Fidel looks resigned and says “Yes. Yes he did.” Dwayne shakes his head and walks away. A little later, Dwayne is complaining about Humphrey, and Fidel is telling him that Richard would want them to give him a chance. Even though Fidel is trying to get around how unimpressive the new man has been.

Camille wants nothing to do with him, and she’s a far cry from friendly. The next scene is Humphrey and Camille walking on the beach, and Humphrey can’t stop uncomfortably talking, and being a goober.

He finally says, “You really don’t want me here do you?

“No.”

Humphrey stops walking. “I’m not here to take his place. I’m not here to be him. I don’t expect anything. Any consideration. I’m just here. And while I’m here I promise I will do everything I can to find out what happened to your friend. ‘Cause that’s what he was. Not just your colleague. I’m sorry for your loss. I truly am.”

It’s sincere, and he may be a goober, but we like him. It’s impossible not to.

“But the thing is, I have a feeling I may need some help, and a great deal of it. You can decide if you like me afterwards.”

Camille is not exactly thawing. “And if I don’t?”

Humphrey has a good smile, which even conveys self-deprecation. “Good point. I don’t even have an answer for that.”

He looks down and sees that the surf has come up and his shoes are immersed. It fits his lack of ‘cool’.

“There’s a whole list of things I’m not very good at. But, I am a good detective And right now more than anything, I want to catch the person who murdered your friend. So maybe, just for now, it’s enough that we both want the same thing.”

Camille is looking at him like a surly teenager who has to listen to a parent. But she looks down and says You’re wet”

“Yes I am.”

“Your shoes will dry as we walk.” She says this with maybe the slightest hint of a smile (I’m honestly not sure), turns, and they go on.

There’s a lot of humor around the British CDIs not fitting in. Though one, who is Irish, actually seems like a rather normal person! But this episode really leverages the emotional impact of Richard’s death, in multiple ways. This is a pretty compelling scene that helps us adopt Humphrey quickly.

The assigned CDIs have their different hangups. Along with a marked SUV, the other official vehicle is a motorcycle with a sidecar. Dwayne drives. Richard hated being in the sidecar. But Humphrey finds it “splendid.” This just makes Dwayne shake his head.

If you follow me on FB, you know that I periodically play ‘I Know that Actor,’ where I snap a pic of some actor I know from another show or a movie. I started this years ago with all the great cameos on Columbo. And I do it with shows like Pysch, Monk, and other episodic ones I watch. Murdoch Mysteries is great for Canadian actors, and I do it with Death in Paradise. In this episode, one of the four suspects is Helen Baxendale. She was’ Ross’ British wife Emily, on Friends. She also had the lead on Curtain, the final Hercule Poirot story. I’ve talked about the FANTASTIC series with David Suchet, here.

I’m not going to give away the solution. This is one of those shows where the main detective solves the case without revealing anything, and the suspects are then gathered together for the denouement. This was established with Richard, but Humphrey is put off by the approach. “In front of everyone??” He doesn’t want to do it, but he likes it!

The solution reveals that Richard’s keen intellect, observational skills, and ability to solve a puzzle, led to his murder. It’s a nice farewell to the show’s star.

They actually brought Miller back for a sort-of-dream sequence, in season ten, as he gives advice to a character. It’s a very low-key, powerful scene. I only picked up on one neat element when I re-watched these first two seasons.

Back at the station, Humphrey finds his desk bare. He’s puzzled, looking for his stuff. Camille has set him up at Richard’s old desk. He is the new DCI. It’s nice closure. Humphrey does not join the gathering at the bar. He feels an intruder as they say goodbye to Richard in their own way. He takes a taxi home, but he and Camille have a bond.

The show ends with a voice mail from his wife, who is still behind in England wrapping things up. She is divorcing him. This episode has packed SO much emotion in one hour, from start to finish.

Marshall would stay on the show for three seasons, before the inevitable casting change. I’m not exaggerating when I talk about the turnover. The latest DCI was introduced in the new Christmas special.

In 2023, a new spinoff show was created, Beyond Paradise. Humphrey is in Devon (Southwest England). He’s still ‘himself’ (another fitting opening scene). The show is as much about his relationship with his girlfriend, as about the crimes. I like it well enough, and it’s been renewed for a third season (they just had a new Christmas special), but I’m not that invested in it.

I NEVER solve the case on Death in Paradise (which i always a murder, I believe). It’s always convoluted. I think they do a decent job with fair play, but I don’t even try to figure it out anymore. I just enjoy the show.

Series creator Robert Thorogood wrote three Death in Paradise novels, set in the Richard Poole era. I just finished the first, and started the second. They’re okay. No surprise that he has the characters down, and he plays out Richard’s characteristics and his hating living there. But they read slooooow. It took me awhile to complete the first one. It was good enough to continue on, but these aren’t the Monk novels. Or even the Psych ones.

I 100% recommend watching Death in Paradise. It has remained a good show, with no shark jumping. The cast changes work (though there was one police officer I was hoping would be shot in the line of duty – beyond annoying). I hope this keeps rolling along. Check it out.

UPDATE!

I did not mention a recent Australian spin-off, Return to Paradise. I haven’t seen it, and from what I could tell, it didn’t actually have anything to do with the original show.

However, I see that DI Jack Mooney (the Irish CDI for four seasons on Death), appeared in two of the six episodes. YAY!!!! I need to watch this show now.

Some previous entries on things to watch:

What I’m Watching: October 2024 (What We Do in the Shadows, The Bay, Murder in a Small Town)
What I’m Watching – November 2023 (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, A Haunting in Venice)
What I’m Watching – April 2023 (Florida Man, Picard – season three, The Mandalorian)
The Pale Blue Eye, and The Glass Onion: Knives Out
Tony Hillerman’s Dark Winds
The Rings of Power (Series I wrote on this show – all links at this one post)
What I’m Watching – December 2022 (Frontier, Leverage: Redemption)
What I’m Watching – November 2022 (Tulsa King, Andor, Fire Country, and more)
What I’m Watching – September 2022 (Galavant, Fire Fly, She-Hulk, and more)
What I’m Watching- April 2022 (Outer Range, Halo, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, and more)
When USA Network was Kicking Major Butt (Monk, Psych, Burn Notice)
You Should be Streaming These Shows (Corba Kai, The Expanse, Bosch, and more)
What I’m BritBoxing – December 2021 (Death in Paradise, Shakespeare & Hathaway, The Blake Mysteries, and more)
To Boldly Go – Star Treking – (Various Star Trek incarnations)
What I’ve Been Watching – August 2021 (Monk, The Tomorrow War, In Plain Sight, and more)
What I’m Watching – June 2021 (Get Shorty, Con Man, Thunder in Paradise, and more)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
What I’ve Been Watching – June 2021 (Relic Hunter, Burn Notice, Space Force, and more)
Appaloosa
Psych of the Dead
The Mandalorian
What I’m Watching: 2020 – Part Two (My Name is Bruce, Sword of Sherwood Forest, Isle of Fury, and more)
What I’m Watching 2020: Part One (The Adventures of Brisco County Jr, Poirot, Burn Notice, and more)
Philip Marlowe: Private Eye
Leverage
Nero Wolfe – The Lost Pilot
David Suchet’s ‘Poirot’
Sherlock Holmes (over two dozen TV shows and movies)

Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXIII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Berkley (January 14, 2025)

Length: 496 pages

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Grady Hendrix is known for his horror novels with unique takes, sometimes with a social spin, and there’s no doubt he’s tackling some heavier and more complex themes in Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, even if some of them might be over his head. Whether or not Hendrix fully succeeds will depend on the reader—but he’s definitely taking some risks, and that’s always worth noting.

As the story opens, we’re transported to 1970 as 15-year-old Neva Craven becomes “Fern” at the Wellwood Home, a sanctuary for teen girls facing unplanned pregnancies. None of the girls here use their real names or talk about their pasts. They were here to do one thing only—carry out the rest of their pregnancies in secrecy, provided with the necessary medical care and support until they give birth, then give their babies up for adoption. Then they go back to their old lives, never to speak of this time again.

At the home, Fern and her newfound friends—with names like Rose, Zinnia, Holly—while away their days waiting for their due dates, chafing under the strict supervision of the owner, Miss Wellwood. Every two weeks, an eccentric librarian named Miss Parcae will stop by in her book mobile and provide some reading material for the girls. One day, Miss Parcae hands Fern a book on the occult that changes everything: How to be A Groovy Witch, a slim volume of spells that are guaranteed to get you what you want in life, if only you are strong enough to take what’s yours. This includes pledging your loyalty to your coven, even if it means having to take bold, sometimes messy actions. However, as Fern delves further deeper into the book’s secrets, things soon spiral into darker, deadlier territory—especially as the girls grow increasingly desperate to change their circumstances.

As events progress, witchcraft becomes our characters’ only path to regaining the autonomy and dignity they’ve lost. This thread underlies much of the story, becoming a powerful metaphor that resonates. Hendrix does an admirable job portraying the emotional turmoil of the young women at Wellwood Home. Each of them arrived there for unique reasons—some more terrible than others—yet they all share a common thread: their families, unable to bear the societal shame of their daughters’ pregnancies, have sent them away to erase the scandal, with the expectation that once their babies are born and adopted out, they can quietly return home and pretend none of it ever happened. While some of the girls are resigned to this arrangement, others are far less willing to give up their rights as mothers but are forced to do it anyway. Often, they are written off as too young and incapable of making their own decisions or deemed unfit because of their “wayward” reputation.

The author deserves credit for approaching these emotional struggles with clear intent and empathy, making the women’s rebellion—their choice of turning to a book of witchcraft—feel both bittersweet and empowering in its own strange way. That said, I couldn’t help but feel the execution was uneven at times. For one, the pacing felt inconsistent. After a strong start, the middle sections meandered and touched upon so many separate threads at once that it diluted some of the tension and urgency. Elements of the occult also felt slightly underdeveloped, as if the story was torn between taking a full-on plunge into the supernatural realm or staying firmly rooted in reality.

Using pregnancy and childbirth as a device in horror novels can also be tricky, though one good example of doing it right is Danielle Valentine’s Delicate Condition. There’s the undeniable feminine experience in the subject, which can be deeply personal, and raises the question of whether complex issues like emotional vulnerability and physical sacrifice can be authentically portrayed, especially when interpreted through a male lens. This isn’t to say that male authors shouldn’t write about these topics or that Hendrix’s take isn’t valid, but I will confess that, in at least one instance, his portrayal of childbirth came across as borderline exploitative and sensationalized for shock value. It made me feel kind of icky, and not for the right reasons.

Still, it may hit differently depending on the reader. Despite its flaws, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls was a worthy read, delivering a thought-provoking tale especially when considering the subject matter and taking the historical setting in context. The story is undoubtedly at its best when leaning into the raw emotions of its characters like anger and helplessness giving way to hope, determination, and defiance. Fans of Grady Hendrix’s previous works will want to pick this one up, as will readers who are curious about the premise and are also interested stories with a witchy punch.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephanie Gillis is a vlogger, writer, dog trainer, and dinosaur-enthusiast living in Colorado with a very load and obnoxious parrot. She has two Bachelor's degrees in Linguistics and Japanese. When she's not staring at a bright white computer screen for hours on end you may be able to spot her in her natural habitat digging through thrift stores or seeing movies at ridiculously early hours of the morning. If seen in public, approach with caution, puppies, and musical song lyrics.
Find Stephanie online: website
The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids links: Amazon, Goodreads


Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Before we start, tell us a little about yourself.
I’m Stephanie Gillis and I call myself a writer, reader, dork extraordinaire. I’ve been a youtuber since 2007 and a published author since 2013. I go by Qwordy on the internet there where I make bookish content and host productivity sprints to help other writers get their words in or just people needing support getting whatever they need done. I live in Colorado and recently became a dogmom to a mastiff mix puppy named Pawl.
Do you have a day job? If so, what is it?
Yes, I have a boring day job as a billing administrator for a coffee equipment company.
Who are some of your favorite writers, and why is their work important to you?
I have so many but I think my top authors I’m a fan of are Marissa Meyer, Elizabeth Lim, Margaret Rogerson, Rebecca Ross, and Andy Weir. They’re all masters of world-building and amazing character craft. They’ve given me some of my favorite worlds and characters that I often feel recharged after reading one of their books.
What do you like most about the act of writing?
I have these moments where I don’t even realize I’m writing, my fingers just kind of go faster than my brain and before I know it I’ve got characters doing what they want and completely deviating from the outline but it’s a fun challenge to figure out why inevitably those were better choices. My idea often changes so much from the original concept it’s a wonder I even bother to make outlines anymore. For example, in The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids, there is a character named Darius who sort of just popped up, I hadn’t planned on him in the outline but found he was one of my favorites to interject into the sisters’ storyline and was a great addition to the cast I didn’t know I needed until I was writing.
Can you lead us through your creative process? What works and doesn’t work for you? How long do you need to finish a book?
It depends on the book, I’ve changed my attack styles over the years. I used to plot out in beats but then discovered Katytastic’s 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter method and found that was a really great method for how my brain works in terms of creature, even if I don’t fully stick to it by the third act, it’s a great method of sorting out all the arcs. I usually do a basic plot one and then I do character specific outlines just to be clear on where everyone is at any time even when they’re not in the chapter, it helps keep up with continuity for the most part. I do write linearly and can’t just write a scene for later and bring it in because too much can happen between now and then and by the time I get there that scene doesn’t seem to fit anymore. Depending on the book it can take me a couple years before it’s a finished project, HSFCAC took about a year to draft and then several years of edits before it came out in Oct 2023. I like to take my time on edits to make sure I’m producing my best version with the messages I want to convey being my biggest priority. I’ve learned a lot about my process since my first novel so you may see a drastic change in style from my first book, Search for The Phoenix vs. The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids.
What made you decide to self-publish The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids as opposed to traditional publishing?
I’ve been self-publishing since my first series, The Ashport Archives, mostly because I just wanted to check it off the bucket list and now it’s turned into 80% of my personality. With HSFCAC I did want to try out traditional publishing so I did query it but not extensively. If I was going trad I wanted to make sure I was going to work with agents that I liked so I didn’t query hundreds like many others but the feedback I mostly got was that it was great but too long and I’d spent so long on editing it to what it was, I couldn’t fathom cutting anymore with how much the story has to say. I like the control that I have over self-publishing and thanks to an amazing kickstarter campaign I was able to produce a lot more with the book for those backers.
What’s your favorite and least favorite parts of self-publishing?
It’s definitely the control over my work. I can market it correctly as I find lately the trends of publishing aren’t things I can claim to and often times can even be misleading to what the content is in a book over what sells in traditional publishing that I feel oversaturates the market. I like that I could hire people I know and trust to edit (Zoe Plait) and do my cover/interior art (Tycho Dwelis, author/illustrator who is amazing). My least favorite part is also the marketing, the amount of time and money that has to be allocated to it, I’m terrible at that because I have so many other things going on in my life that it’s hard to balance that while not burning out.
Why did you enter SPFBO?
I learned about SPFBO a couple years ago because I subscribe to CoverswithCassidy on youtube and thought this was a great way to find other indie books. As a book reviewer myself, I love lifting up indie voices and finding the hidden gems out there in the world so I started by just adding books to my endless TBR. I was in the midst of writing HSFCAC then so I promised myself I would enter it when it was finished. I think it’s a great competition that even though has an elimination process still promotes great works that people can find regardless. I even did my own livestream series called “Will it TBR” where I went through ever single entry this year and decided if it would go on my personal tbr and also helped my audience find books they might not have otherwise heard of.
How would you describe the plot of The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids if you had to do so in just one or two sentences?
It’s about three sisters who take care of magical creatures in a small town trying to drive them out because they suspect them to be witches, all while each is processing their own trauma (both personal and generational) and learning to rebond as sisters in order to defend their livelihood.
What was your initial inspiration for The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids? How long have you been working on it? Has it evolved from its original idea?
Initially I got mad at an episode of either Monsterquest or Finding Bigfoot, I can’t remember, but they kept referring to Bigfoot as “he” and I was thinking, you don’t know if Bigfoot is a man. I’m a woman with big feet, she could be a girl so thus Harriet the Bigfoot was born for the book. The rest of the book came from my own experiences in processes trauma, so each of the sisters is kind of a different part of me at different stages in my life and was a therapeutic way of overcoming things that have happened to me in the past, especially with Calliope’s story being the most close to home overall. Like her, I was SA’d and kept silent about it for many years and it’s really only since writing the book that I’ve been able to talk about because writing her journey of healing was in a way, also my journey. I started writing the book in 2019 and finished the first draft around the end of 2020. This was the first time not a whole lot deviated from the original plan because all of the arcs were so close to home for me that it was very easy to stick to the plan. It took several years of edits because it was so long 162k at the first draft, and I could only pay my editor per chapter as I was working at a grocery store at the time and did not have the means to pay at full price. Luckily my editor was phenomenal and understanding and worked with me through the whole process.
What genre does it belong to?
While it’s fantasy, I consider it a contemporary fantasy. It’s the real world but while there are these fantastic creatures in it the core heart of the story is about the sisters and their journeys and relationships so that to me gives it a more contemporary vibe with fantastical elements. Though there is plenty of fantasy for those who just want to delve into the cryptid side of the book.
If you had to describe it in 3 adjectives, which would you choose?
Wholesome, Romantic, Tumultuous.
Is it part of the series or a standalone? If series, how many books have you planned for it?
It can be read as a standalone but I do have two more books planned in the series, however, they are more companions with different main characters and appearance from the Lambros family.
Who are the key players in this story? Could you introduce us to The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids’s protagonists/antagonists?
There are four main POVs and four others I consider in the main cast. We have the Lambros sisters: Melpomene, Calliope, and Thalia as well as the new girl in town, Asha. Melpomene is the eldest sister, she is struggling to keep the house together with many a DIY repair project and the financial stress of having parents MIA and leaving it up to you to feed your younger sisters. Calliope is the middle sister, she is the best with the creatures and dropped out of high school in order to fully be the caretaker of roughly 30 animals, she refuses to leave the grounds due to her trauma with the townspeople though her sisters don’t realize how severe that agoraphobia really is. Thalia is the younger and just wants out. Her plan is to graduate and be gone from the tiny town that hates her family but that is overturned when the new girl comes into town and completely steals her heart. Asha, the new girl, is the heiress to the new resort opening up in the mountain town, she struggles under the pressure her parents put on her to always be thinking of how her actions will reflect on her parents business so she has a rebellious streak when it gets too tough with them.
Then we have Liam and Owen who are sent by the Lambros’ absent mother to help bring in a new acquisition for the house. Though their reasons for going to Lambros House may not be as good-intentioned as they seem. Darius, is new to the town and working as the handyman for the new resort and meets Melpomene in the local hardware store where he is then embroiled in town gossip and a curiosity for the sisters. Our main antagonist is known as Mr. Underwood who works for a secret society that would like to exploit not only the creatures but the mysterious power the Lambros sisters seem to have over the cryptids.
Does your book feature a magic/magic system? If yes, can you describe it?
It’s a very subtle magic system which is also the series title, Terraglossa. It’s the amount of ability one has to communicate or even control the magical creatures in the books. The sisters all have varying degrees with Calliope being the most talented on her own but there’s also an element of working together that makes them more powerful. Since all the creatures are magical in their own right, it goes that utilizing things they produce (feathers, fur, blood, etc) can also be utilized magically and that is what Thalia is most skilled at doing, somewhat mad scientist style to help create remedies and potions as needed.
Have you written the book with a particular audience in mind?
First and foremost, I really wrote the book for me. It’s also why traditional publishing wasn’t the way to go because it’s not strictly young adult and it’s not strictly adult either. It’s a book that readers from probably 12 and up could enjoy. I classify it as YA because Thalia and Asha are both teenagers but Calliope and Melpomene are both adults dealing with very adult problems. I just wanted to make a book that I knew I needed and maybe others can appreciate what it has to say as well.
What’s new or unique about your book that we don’t see much in speculative fiction these days?
Somewhat what I’ve sad before with the varying ages of the protagonists. It makes it hard to classify where I see a lot of others being very easy to tell if it has adult content or not. I know the three many popular categories in fantasy right now appear to be “spicy romantasy”, “grim or epic fantasy” and “cozy fantasy”. I’d say HSFCAC fits more so with cozy but because there are heavier plots happening, it’s hard to fully commit it to the subgenre so it just kind of exists outside of the realm of what I feel is the norm. Not that those genres are bad, I enjoy all three as a reader but find it difficult to write within genre standards.

Cover art is always an important factor in book sales. Can you tell us about the idea behind the cover of The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids and the artist?
My wonderful cover artist is a fellow author friend of mine. His name is Tycho Dwelis and I met him while tabling at a convention in Fort Collins. We just hit it off, stalked each other a bit on twitch streams, and now he’s one of my best friends. He’s so talented in his writing and art and I was watching one of his art streams where he did some fantastic lighting on a piece for one of his books, One Pale Reflection, and knew I had to have him do the art. He not only did the cover but all the interior art because each chapter starts with a faux journal entry about one of the creatures so he did all these amazing creature sketches. We often trade skills for each other because I can’t draw to save my life but I’m a great editor so I tend to help with edits on his work and in return I get great art for my works. It’s one of my favorite things about the indie community is building friendships where we can support each other, rather than treat other indie authors as competition. You’ll often hear me hyping up his stuff because I truly believe him to be so talented and I’m so blessed for his friendship.
What are you currently working on that readers might be interested in learning more about, and when can we expect to see it released?
I’m working on quite a few projects right now, not only the sequel to HSFCAC lovingly currently acronymed as HSOBO. I also have an anthology of short stories hopefully coming out at the end of the year. I did a project in 2022 writing in a different genre short story every month and have been publishing them individual and then the final bind up with everyone should be out in December. I also have what I call my “cozy ogre romance” I’m working on and expansions of some of the short stories I did starting with a middle grade series called Sweet Pea & Sniffley about a girl in a fictional western style world but with lots and lots of dragons. And I have a superhero book as well exploring a superhero who has lost their powers and is dealing with that aftermath. So just a little bit…definitely not overwhelming at all…
Thank you for taking the time to answer all the questions. In closing, do you have any parting thoughts or comments you would like to share with our readers?
Thank you so much for inviting me to this. I’m so honored to just be in SPFBO and have this opportunity. The indie community is so great I’d like to take time to shout out some other authors that have written some of my all-time favorite novels who weren’t in SPFBO this year but you should definitely check out their work: Tycho Dwelis, Kendra Merritt, Lena M. Johnson, M.M. Ward, E.J. Dawson, Caroline Logan, and O.E. Tearmann. Thank you again! If you’d like to check out my other works or find me on the internet elsewhere, you can check out my ko-fi page ko-fi.com/stephaniegillis or find me on youtube as Qwordy and on twitch/instagram I’m QwordyQ.

You know, sometimes cats make great assistants, and sometimes, no matter how hard they try, they’re not up for the task. Angel tried to help me with my writing challenge in December, but it didn’t work. First of all, I gave up writing on yellow legal pads in the seventh grade. (Although I did write something like six novels on them, mostly fan fic, because…hello!…I was twelve.)

Anyway, I had a challenge with folks to write three short stories in December. Some writers did that. All the writers who joined and finished a story beat me. Because currently, the story I started is 43,000 words long. Yep, I’m working on a surprise novel. But the December challenge got me back to short fiction—and I wanted to do something similar all year.

I have a lot of novels to write in 2025. They’re pent up, because as of August or so, I couldn’t really concentrate. Too busy saving the business, moving WMG to Nevada, finishing up some other projects, dealing with a legal headache, and a whole bunch of other things. Most of that has cleared, and now my writing brain is ready to go. But it wants to write all the novels and all the short stories…and I know me. I will focus on the novels and forget the short stories unless I have a deadline.

So, writers! I’m going to use you as my assistants in setting a deadline. Not for three short stories each month, but for one. Yep, just one.

Here’s the rules as Dean wrote them written on the Teachable website:

Kris is planning on writing one story a month. So she thought she would open it up as a way to keep herself focused and also to help others focus. So one story per month to write along with Kris.

If Kris writes one story per month and you write at least one or more stories per month, you double your $50 fee in credit on Teachable.

This Write Along goes for three months, then starts over if you want to keep going.

If Kris does not write one story per month for those three months, then no matter how many stories you write, you double your $50 fee in credit on Teachable.

Short story must be over 3,000 words. No upper limit.

No genre limitations.

Kris will report to all of you regularly through each month as she writes or finishes a story.

The cost is $50. This Write Along will repeat every three months. Kris hopes to write 12 stories in a year at least, but she wants to do one per month no matter what else she is writing.

(No credit from anything, I am afraid. Can’t buy in with credit to get more credit.)

So in essence, you are buying at least $50 credit and getting the chance to give yourself a focus to write one short story per month and hear from Kris along the way about her writing.

Kris is excited to do this. She really wants to get 12 stories done this year and feels this will keep her focused on it.

This is a win/win/win write along. Jump in, should be fun and get your writing fired up for the new year!

Lifetime Everything Subscribers, if you want to jump in, write me and I will send you the code and you can do it for fun.

Questions, write to Dean. The email address is on Teachable.

And, speaking of Teachable, because of the weirdness of having four holidays midweek, we decided to extend the 12 Days of Workshops sale. If you really want challenges, then you can get all of our challenges are half off right now, and there are some great ones. There are a lot of other great workshops and deals in the 12 Days, so take a look. It’ll end later this week.

Updates for Galadon, audio, and paperbacks.

Happy (slightly belated) New Year! As usual, I took the opportunity to cover some highlights of 2024 and discuss my favorite stories from the last year. Blog Highlights in 2024 One of the biggest highlights of 2024 on this blog was the thirteenth annual Women in SF&F Month, which contained wonderful essays by speculative fiction authors discussing their thoughts, experiences, influences, and work. It featured the following guest posts (which are eligible for nonfiction/related work awards): Gabriella Buba — “Fantasy […]

The post Favorite Books/Media of 2024 & Year in Review first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

I’ve been trying to remember when I first read The Lord of the Rings and it must’ve been when I was ten or so, meaning in 1976 or early 1977. I say this because my dad bought me The Silmarillion for Christmas and it was published in September 1977. That means I read The Hobbit when I was nine or so. Coming up on 59 next year, it means I’ve been reading Prof. Tolkien’s work for nearly fifty years.

Rankin & Bass Bilbo and Gollum

I assume I came across The Hobbit on my dad’s shelf next to his living room chair. It’s where he kept the various books he was reading at any given time. His habit was to stay downstairs till midnight or one, reading and listening to WQXR, the New York Times’ old classical station. I’d definitely read it before November 1977 when the Rankin & Bass The Hobbit premiered. As a side note, my dad tried to get our first color TV before it aired, but he wasn’t able to.

I didn’t read LotR right away, but when I did, I found myself in competition with my dad to finish them. With only the single set of books in the house, we read them in tandem. I remember rushing home from church to see if I could grab The Fellowship of the Ring before my dad had finished reading The New York Times that morning. Even though some days I got the book before him, he read faster and more often and finished several days before me. Hey, I was only ten.

the Grimms’ devils & demons by Lucille Corcos

I grew up on fairy tales of all sorts, but particularly the unexpurgated Brothers Grimm stories. Lots of death, murder, cannibalism, witches, and demons were my standard fare. The editions we had were profusely and grotesquely illustrated. Those sorts of stories plus books like the D’aulaires Book of Norse Myths, meant by the time I read The Hobbit, I was ready and well-primed for it.

It remains a great read, and easily one of the most memorable fantasy stories I read early on. In Bilbo Baggins, Tolkien created the perfect stand-in for young readers. A bit naive, a bit scared of the dark, and, still, ready and waiting for adventure. Everything past the Shire’s boundaries was as new and enthralling for me as it was for him. The book is so vivid and so impressed on my mind from my very first read, if not word-for-word, I think I could do a pretty good job retelling the story from the very beginning. Fairy tales, I knew, were old stories, told and told again over the centuries. The Hobbit, even if it drew on that folklore tradition, was an original story and it whetted my appetite for more. It’s a straight line from that book to all my other fantasy reading over the following half-century. Before it pointed me to Moorcock, Wagner, and Howard, though, it pointed me to The Lord of the Rings. And in my case, that meant the editions with Barbara Remington’s phantasmagorical cover illustrations.

Covers by Barbara Remington

I spent some time puzzling over them trying to connect them to Tolkien’s prose. Sure, that’s Hobbiton to the left, Shelob’s lair and the Nazgul in the center, and Mount Doom and a battle on the right. They’re so stylized, though, that I wasn’t quite sure what to make of them. I mean, are those cassowaries on the cover of Fellowship? What’s that running through the woods? What is going on?

by Michael K. Firth

They, more than any of the covers since, are The Lord of the Rings covers for me, though. Those with Tolkien’s own paintings are fine, but the others are all too precise or realistic. Remington’s preserve the strangeness that the stories held me for me the first time I read them. My visions of Moria, Orthanc, and Minas Tirith were unburdened by decades of storytelling set in mock-medieval European settings. They rose off the page like the alien creations they were. The Hobbit and LotR were the first actual fantasy books I read. Fairy tales are set in fairy tale land, hazy and indistinct in their settings. Tolkien’s stories were the first I can recall that were set in lavishly described realistic landscapes with protagonists with some sort of characterization that went beyond stalwart prince or cunning soldier and mixed it with barrow wights, sword-wielding demons, and oathbreaking ghosts. That they’re also the basis for the original cover of the parodic Bored of the Rings only reinforces my love for them.

Tolkien and his books were just becoming commercialized when I first read them. The Brothers Hildebrandt produced several extremely well-selling calendars. Everyone and his brother wrote encyclopedias of Middle-earth or books explaining just what Tolkien meant. The extreme end of this trend was, I’d argue, the careful creation of The Sword of Shannara (read my review here), followed by stacks of books wherein doughty commoners trudged into some dark lord’s land accompanied by a small band comprised of elves, dwarves, and men.

Everyone I was friends with, by which I really mean everyone, read, or at least tried, to read Tolkien. We were all proto-fantasy nerds and it was great. The books were everywhere and I loved it. It felt like I was part of some special order that was privy to something extraordinary. Looking back, I think that was true.

When I told the luminous Mrs. V. how old I was when I read LotR, she asked me if I understood it. Without hesitation, I said yes. I did understand it, but mostly on a basic level, as an exciting tale of adventure filled with magic and monsters. What I missed at ten, came with later readings;  an overwhelming sense of a fading world which darkness threatens to overwhelm and endlessly eroding the strength of those arrayed against it.

All the ruins and tombs that littered the land around the Shire are the broken remains of realms lost to the darkness.  Vast swaths of Middle-earth are devoid of civilization and population having been devastated in past wars, barbarian invasions, and by plague. Some of the greatest powers that have stood against Sauron for thousands of years have decayed in the case of Gondor or succumbed to his temptations as has Saruman.

Covers by JRR Tolkien

Reading The Silmarillion the first time around was mind-boggling. It was not the book I was expecting at all. It was a collection more like the collections of Norse and Greek myths I read than Tolkien’s previous novels. I wanted more LotR and instead, I got the Old Testament of the Elves. Notwithstanding, I got my first sense that Middle-earth was a broken world — quite literally in The Silmarillion. It was a place where evil constantly lurked and sometimes even marched out of its strongholds and crushed everything. It was a place where pride and arrogance constantly led to downfall and self-destruction. I got my first hint of what I had missed that first time around in LotR.

Tolkien described the book as “fundamentally religious and Catholic.” With further readings, while I might not have gotten that explicitly, I did see the moments of grace and Christ-like sacrifice that were essential elements of The Lord of the Rings. That they were manifested in a fallen world made them only more powerful. It became clearer with each reading that LotR was more than an epic adventure story. I’ll explore these in future articles about the individual volumes over the next few months. You see, I’m in the midst of another read of LotR, inspired by a rewatch of Peter Jackson’s movies.

I put Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring on a few weeks ago for background noise and was immediately reminded of how much I’ve come to dislike it and its sequels. Again, I’ll go into more detail in later pieces, but suffice it to say, my distaste was enough to inspire me to pull out the real thing, open the cover and read those first lines:

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

In future installments I’ll write about the individual books of The Lord of the Rings; The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King (if you’re very good, I’ll write about Bored of the Rings, as well). This will involve derogatory opinions of the Jackson movies as well as less harsh ones about Ralph Bakshi’s strangely appealing animated movie and even Rankin and Bass’ song-filled cartoon. I’m not sure how much anyone needs to read about Prof. Tolkien’s books at this point, but I really do feel the need to write about them. I hope you’ll follow along and tell me all your opinions about the books and movies, as well.

The Bridge of Khazad-dûm by the Bros. Hildebrandt

Fletcher Vredenburgh writes a column the first Friday of the month at Black Gate, mostly about older books he hasn’t read before. He also posts at his own site, Stuff I Like when his muse hits him.

Happy New year and good luck with the planning and writing of Book#4. By the way, I love the title for the 3rd Book, I just wish that it was coming a bit (ie a lot) sooner!

I am interested in how Essentia is extracted from wells by the Raiders (and also how it is removed from unwanted Sigls too) and then stored (?) as Aurum.

By accumulating a large amount of Aurum from the wells Stephen has access to (Class D and lower?), he could presumable make some of the higher level Sigls that would conventionally need a Class ‘A’ or ‘S’ Well to construct?

Hatched (Uncorked, 2021)

We’re off on another adventure filled to the brim with disappointment. 20 films I’ve never seen before, all free to stream, all dinosaur-based.

Oh God.

Hatched (2021) Prime

Just how bad is the CG? Almost okay except when interacting with lunch.

Sexy scientist? Yep.

Mumbo jumbo? Cloning, reanimation, gene foolery.

There are a couple of production company names that, if they pop up at the beginning, let me know what to expect. Uncorked is one of them. Imagine my surprise then, when this film turned out to be competently shot and, for the most part, decently acted.

Filmed on one stately location in the UK, it’s basically a hide and seek story with CG dinosaurs. Despite the (you would imagine) adrenaline-laced plot, it’s all very pedestrian, nobody seems overly concerned, and I counted four, count ‘em, four very slow head turns in reaction to growling, just before snacking.

Dr Fannypack McSpaghettistraps trips over a twig in one of the more laughable moments, but on the whole I didn’t hate it. Probably because I know there is much worse to come.

5/10

Dinosaur Hotel (Jagged Edge Productions, 2021), and 100 Million BC (The Asylum, 2008)

Dinosaur Hotel (2021) Tubi

Just how bad is the CG? Pretty terrible.

Sexy scientist? Nope.

Mumbo jumbo? Unexplained dinosaurs, game show, floating robot.

Another UK production shot in a single stately location somewhere ‘oop North.’ This one is a simple idea; put a bunch of ladies in a big house and terrorize them with bad computer graphics.

It’s nonsense, but that’s what I came for — however, any possible enjoyment I might have teased out of this mess was marred by some pretty bad child acting. I realize this makes me a B-movie grinch for ragging on kids, but come on, there are decent child actors out there, and even if you can’t afford one, you can direct kids with a bit of care and attention. That said, it looked like the children were having a great time on set, so good for them.

The CG creatures were as bad as Hatched, and I might not be a compositor of any great skill, but even I know how to match lighting, film grain and focal length to make it look like your digital creations are actually in the scene. Still, it wasn’t shot with Uncle Larry’s 1998 camcorder, so a bit of it was good to look at.

4/10

100 Million BC (2008) YouTube

Just how bad is the CG? Pretty damn terrible.

Sexy scientist? Sexy nurse, sexy nurse assistant.

Mumbo jumbo? Wormholes, time travel.

The Asylum is great at getting knock-off movies out faster than the real thing, so just as Emmerich was about to unleash 10,000 BC, the Asylum churns out this dollop.

Potentially it could be fun, Navy Seals sent back in time on a search and rescue mission, but the effects are so laughably lousy, and the direction so wooden, that it’s a real slog. Not even Nurse Perky McShirtgape or her assistant, Crevasse McSlitskirt, can save it. Dire.

3/10

Raptor (New Concorde, 2001), and Jurassic Predator: Xtinction (K2 Pictures/Leverage Entertainment, 2010)

Raptor (2001) Tubi

Just how bad is the CG? None! It’s all rubbish puppets and body suits.

Sexy scientist? Sexy Animal Control Officer.

Mumbo jumbo? Cloning, Project Blue Book.

A swift glance at the talent involved in this, and you might be forgiven for thinking you had struck gold. Scored by James Horner, produced by Roger Corman, starring Eric Roberts and Corbin Bernsen (who is clearly having the time of his life). Well, maybe not gold, but not a polished turd either.

It’s ludicrous, decidedly dodgy at times, and features an unfeasibly raunchy Animal Control Officer, ACO Tightpants McTightertop, who might be a little out of her depth. The dinosaurs are hysterical/cute/rubbish puppets, but there’s some fun, practical gore FX on show, and when it finished I was actually disappointed, however that could be down to tonight’s choice of intoxication.

5/10

Jurassic Predator: Xtinction (2010) YouTube

Just how bad is the CG? PS3 quality.

Sexy scientist? Sexy Scientist Spouse.

Mumbo jumbo? Cloning

A cloned mosasaurus is chowing down on hapless swamp denizens in this suitably hokey B-movie. Mark (Stargate) Shepherd plays the sleazy scientist with a couple of hillbilly goons in tow, and it’s up to his ex-wife (Elena Lyons, who looks like she’s not having fun) and the impossibly likeable Lochlyn Munro to make him ‘xtinct’.

The effects aren’t great, but they’re a step up from the usual rubbish, although the titular beastie could have done without the goofy eyes, and it takes itself far too seriously for this genre, but I didn’t hate it.

5/10

Terrordactyl (3rd Films, 2016), and Poseidon Rex (Titan Global Entertainment, 2013)

Terrordactyl (2016) Tubi

Just how bad is the CG? Actually, not terrible.

Sexy scientist? Nope.

Mumbo jumbo? Meteor eggs, space dinosaurs.

Well, it took six films, but we finally got a good one (and when I say good, remember the height of the bar). Terrordactyl knows exactly what it is supposed to be and goes for it, bringing the humor, cheesiness and monster action in spades.

The gore is PG13 level, but the creatures were fun and well animated — the FX team did a solid job on the budget they had. The two leads were likeable, with great banter and action set-pieces, but the star for me was Candice Nunes as the cute, kick-ass, bartender. She was really good and, seeing that she’s in the next one I’m watching, Poseidon Rex, I’ll be going in with less dread.

This film put me in mind of Big Ass Spider — it had the same tone, and managed it on a lower budget.

I’d say watch this one.

7/10

Poseidon Rex (2013) YouTube

Just how bad is the CG? Horrible.

Sexy scientist? Yep.

Mumbo jumbo? Mayan gold, aquatic sauropods.

After yesterday’s half-decent effort, I thought my luck had changed. Far from it. My one ray of hope, Candice Nunes, was wasted, and instead I sat through insufferable acting, lackluster direction and a script as clever as a parsnip.

The saddest thing about it all is that it was directed by Mark L. Lester, who was once able to entertain us with classics such as Commando and Firestarter — but here he just banged out some takes over a couple of weeks in sunny Belize, and then left it in the hands of an incapable editor. Co-produced by, and starring Brian Krause, who makes sure he hooks up with Dr. Pneumatica McSideboob, this is one to avoid.

3/10

Previous Murkey Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

Jumping the Shark
Alien Overlords
Biggus Footus
I Like Big Bugs and I Cannot Lie
The Weird, Weird West
Warrior Women Watch-a-thon

Neil Baker’s last article for us was Jumping the Shark, Part III. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, outdoor educator and owner of April Moon Books (AprilMoonBooks.com).

The Kingdom of Rockfall

Throughout much of its history, Rockfall maintained a certain degree of autonomy within the Empire and later the Allied Lands, remaining effectively independent despite being considerably smaller than most of the kingdoms that make up the Allied Lands. This surprising level of independence is easily explained: a combination of geographical fortune, the local balance of power and simple bloody-mindedness ensures that Rockfall cannot be effectively invaded and conquered, unless the would-be conqueror is willing to pay a very high price indeed.

Rockfall sits within a mountainous region to the north of the Cairngorms, effectively surrounded by mountains that pose an effective deterrent to any sizeable army. The three passes through the mountains – Rumbling Bridge Gorge, Calder Valley and Icefall – are heavily fortified, to the point that a relatively small military force can hold the passes more or less indefinitely. The terrain within the mountains is patchy, making it difficult for serfdom and/or slavery to take root, giving Rockfall more of an egalitarian base than any other kingdom within the Allied Lands, and that is an uneasy truce between the aristocracy and the commoners that formed well before the arrival of the Levellers and endures to this day.

The kingdom has two other advantages that assist it to remain effectively independent. First, because it controls the trade routes running through the valleys, it is able to make itself very useful to the surrounding kingdoms, as well as remaining in touch with technological and magical developments across the Allied Lands. Second, Rockfall exports a considerable degree of both alcohol – the kingdom’s fine wines bring immense profits – and technology. Even before the arrival of the New Learning, Rockfall had a reputation for having the finest craftsmen in the Allied Lands. Now, the craftsmen have embraced the New Learning to a degree unseen outside Cockatrice and Heart’s Eye.

A further advantage is a considerable degree of education and a willingness to allow young men (and often young woman) to spend a year or two apprenticed to a merchant trader, allowing them to see the world outside their mountains. Many of these youngsters return with stories and ideas that can be introduced quickly, including a number of political concepts that challenge the balance of power (see below); a handful of others migrate to merchant and magical quarters in other kingdoms, forming a number of tiny communities that are ready and able to offer support and assistance to their kinsmen. These communal networks do not pose a political threat to their host nations, but they do ensure that their homeland remains abreast of all developments sweeping across the Allied Lands.

The dependency on trade has produced an interesting balance of power. On paper, Rockfall is an feudal monarchy, ruled by the king who rules in concert and sometimes conflict with the aristocracy. In practice, the importance of trade has ensured that merchants have a considerable degree of influence over the kingdom’s politics, to the point that wealthy merchants have often married into the aristocracy, and that every propertied person has the right to elect MPs to Parliament. It isn’t entirely clear how much authority the House of Commons has over the House of Lords, or the monarchy itself, but all parties are very much aware that a major disagreement within the kingdom, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of an outright civil war, will weaken the defences to the point that one or more of their neighbours will feel emboldened to try an invasion. This produces a surprising degree of cooperation, and a certain lack of respect for aristocrats who don’t live up to their titles.

Unusually for a kingdom, there is a considerable degree of sexual equality. Women can hold property in their own names, inherit from their parents, choose their own marriages, and generally do almost everything their male peers can do. (The only real exception is the army, which is male-only.) It is generally believed that Princess Anastasia, the only child of King Arthur and Queen Marion, will assume the throne after her father passes away. There is no great opposition to this within the kingdom, and most objections focus on the Princess’s character – she is known to be lazy, if goodhearted – or the prospect of her marrying someone from outside the kingdom. None of these objections are considered insurmountable.

There are four cities within the kingdom: Robin’s Peak, Rumbling Bridge, Kinross and Caithness. Caithness is the capital, home to the Royal Castle (Caithness Castle), Parliament, the Garrison and most of the trading centres. Rumbling Bridge is just south of Rumbling Bridge Gorge, hemmed in by the rocky walls; Robin’s Peak and Kinross stick to the west and east of the kingdom respectively. They are not free cities in the normal sense of the word, but they maintain a great deal of internal autonomy. Technically, they are under the king’s rule; practically, both sides refrain from putting too much pressure on the relationship.

Rockfall does not have a school of magic, and most magicians are encouraged to travel to one of the long-established schools or apprentice themselves to a local magician. Unusually, there is no distinct magical quarter within any of the major cities; the magicians live and work alongside their mundane counterparts, respected as educated men without the fear that often surrounds magical communities elsewhere. The Royal Family is well known to have a streak of magic, as do most aristocratic and merchant families, and magical immigrants are encouraged to integrate rather than remaining aloof. It is worthwhile to note that this policy has produced excellent results. Very few Supremacists came out of Rockfall, and those that did were often shunned by their peers.

Despite the importance of remaining relatively united, there are deep and dangerous currents bubbling beneath the surface of the mountain kingdom. Conflicts over land use and management have never been wholly resolved, and the arrival of new political concepts and firearms have emboldened the lower classes, demanding representation in the House of Commons (technically, only the propertied people have a vote) and a certain degree of accountability, even control, over the aristocracy and the monarchy itself. A number of Leveller groups have formed within the cities, some public and others doing their best remain underground while they build up a critical mass of supporters they can leverage to demand reforms. A handful even dream of armed revolution.

The prospect of an Alluvian-style uprising has concentrated a few minds, but also caused others to focus on the loyalties of Queen Marion, on the grounds she was a low-ranking Alluvian Princess before she married King Arthur and became his Queen. Many in the aristocracy think the kingdom has gone too far in accommodating the common folk, particularly those who do not or refuse to contribute, and suspect the whole edifice will collapse after the king’s death. The rise of broadsheets challenging accepted truths and reporters digging into matters the aristocracy wishes left untouched has not helped. The fact that Princess Anastasia appears to be unprepared to step into her father’s shoes, let alone marry and produce the next generation of royals, is worst of all, with some factions eagerly anticipating her coronation and others seriously considering ways to force her into marriage with someone a little more responsible or convince her father to put her aside for someone else.

No matter who comes out ahead, the end result is unlikely to be good for the kingdom.

In this week’s LitStack Rec, we look at the 4-book series The Romanovs by Robert…

The post “The Romanovs” by Robert K. Massie and “The Romanoffs” by Matthew Weiner appeared first on LitStack.

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

A Sea of Unspoken Things by Adrienne Young

Mogsy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Genre: Mystery, Fantasy

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Delacorte Press (January 7, 2025)

Length: 288 pages

Author Information: Website

It’s hard to believe that A Sea of Unspoken Things marks my fifth book by Adrienne Young, but over the last few years, I’ve come to realize that I prefer her adult novels with touches of magical realism over her YA. If this is the direction she’s decided to pursue, I’m certainly not complaining—the mature and introspective themes found within tend to be a lot more interesting, and it’s clear the author’s writing has gotten even better and more refined with time.

In A Sea of Unspoken Things, the story combines mystery and familial bonds with a touch of the supernatural. While not without its flaws, the book did stand out to me as an unflinching look at grief and the terrible effect that secrets can have on a small rural town. James Golden is our protagonist who returns to her hometown of Hawthorne, California after the sudden and suspicious death of her twin brother, Johnny. Growing up, the bond between the two siblings had been so strong, at times it even felt supernatural for James. That was how she knew something was seriously wrong the day Johnny died. She knew, because she could have sworn that she felt the pain of the bullet that tore through his body and ended his life, even though at the time, the two of them had been hundreds of miles apart.

Back in Hawthorne, James is finding it hard to face the lingering shadows of her past. Tasked with getting her late twin’s affairs in order, she must also come to terms with the people she left behind and the way she walked out on them. That’s because very few manage to break free of Hawthorne, though James did, thanks to her artistic talents opening the door to art school and a successful career in the city. However, it came at the cost of leaving behind Johnny and their best friend Micah—a decision that still weighs heavily on her to this day. James wonders if her brother would still be alive had she stayed to look out for him. But as she sorts through his things, she begins finding details about Johnny’s life which suggest his demise might not have been an accident. He had been in the forest when it happened, killed by what was thought to be a stray bullet from an oblivious hunter. The police didn’t catch who did it, and might never will, which leaves James determined to uncover the truth herself.

While there’s a lot here to hold one’s attention, Young’s ability to weave in the characters’ complex relationships is what gave me the motivation to keep reading. James’ connection with her twin is beautifully rendered, though her voice often overshadowed my attempts to form my own ideas and opinions about her brother. You can tell James was ultra protective, and I wasn’t always a fan of how her infantilizing of Johnny sold him short. That said, her grief was palpable, and much of the story’s emotional weight came from this. Add in the fraught romantic history between James and Micah, which brought another layer of heartache—especially with the secret he shared with the twins when they were all teenagers, tied to a traumatic incident.

And that brings me to the aspects that didn’t quite land for me. While the mystery surrounding Johnny’s death serves as the book’s main driving force, with clues and revelations that gradually unravel to create an air of suspense, the story often felt weighed down by unnecessary distractions. For instance, the aforementioned incident involving teenage James, Johnny, and Micah did not have much impact on the overall narrative when everything was revealed, nor was it all that significant or surprising to serve well as a twist. And then there was the tease of a supernatural element, leading readers to believe there might have been a psychic connection between James and Johnny. In the end though, that also felt half-formed and ultimately unnecessary, adding little to the plot and feeling kind of pointless.

But once these dramatics were out of the way, allowing the focus to return to the mystery of Johnny’s death, the pacing became much more my speed. The build-up to the truth is indeed compelling, even if most of the action and suspense takes place in the second half of the book. At these moments, the author excels at capturing the mood and setting of Hawthorne, a small town whose residents hold plenty of secrets and bad blood, making every interaction and unresolved conflict a potential clue waiting to blow up.

In the end, A Sea of Unspoken Things is a beautifully written and evocative story about grief which also pulls double duty as a mystery suspense novel. Some threads, particularly tied to the otherworldly aspects of James and Johnny’s close sibling bond, could have been explored more thoroughly, yet the main character’s determination to do right by her dead brother by finding his killer is a big part of the books emotional core and makes up for any shortcomings. Mystery readers and fans of Adrienne Young who appreciate her more nuanced work will be sure to love this one.