A locked room mystery with magic.
Old Tin Sorrows is the fourth book of the Garrett, P.I. books by Glen Cook. It is a Fantastic Noir series set in a High Fantasy world. Garrett is a private investigator, former Marine, and Knight in Sour Armor working to solve a variety of cases with all the witches as well as other creatures about him.
Garrett is contacted by an old war friend, Blake Peters AKA Black Pete, who asks him to investigate the slow delibetating illness of his former commander, General Stantor. Blake Peters believes the general is being poisoned and Stantor won't see a doctor.
The general has a longstanding hatred of doctors due to a medical error leading to the death of his wife. Garrett is forced to come to the general's house and live among the strange Old Money crew of servants as well as deal with the general's beautiful daughter plus a lovely woman that refuses to be identified.
Garrett must determine if illness, murder, or something even more sinister is afoot.
It is followed by Dread Brass Shadows.
Old Tin Sorrows contains the following tropes:
- Arranged Marriage: The General and his wife, Eleanor, were betrothed as part of a protection for the latter from the Royal Family after a failed coup.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Both the General and his daughter, Jennifer, turn out to be cold blooded murderers.
- Bittersweet Ending: Garrett solves the murder of all the General's staff as well as the source of his illness but it gives him no comfort. The General murdered his wife, Eleanor, in a fit of jealousy and caused her ghost to haunt him. The murders were committed by his daughter, Jennifer, to make sure the estate wasn't split up.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: The General, despite being a serial adulterer while married, expected absolute fidelity from his wife. To the point that he kills his wife after months of tormenting her due to the belief she cheated on him. It's only after his daughter's birth that he realizes he was wrong.
- Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Literally so in works of art, such as the statue.
- Dwindling Party:
- Garrett's Marine unit in the islands got whittled down from two hundred to a handful, thanks to enemy action and the swamp's teeming tropical hazards.
- The General's staff starts at eleven and starts going down due to multiple murders that happen throughout the book.
- Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep": Cook. Justified in that she's been the Stantnor estate's cook for three human generations.
- Evil Cripple: General Stantnor also, though he hid it well for most of the book
- Ghostly Goals: Eleanor's ghost sought revenge against General Stantnor and vindication from Garrett. She also falls in love with Garrett and turns against him when he sleeps with her daughter, unaware of their connection.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: The confrontation with his wife's portrait and his culpability finally sends the General over the edge into madness and death. To be fair, it is a magical effect.
- Helping Hands: Severed parts of the draugs keep crawling around after being severed, hands included.
- Inheritance Murder: What Garrett comes to suspect is happening, in addition to the theft and slow poisoning he'd actually been hired to look into. It turns out to be Jennifer, quite possibly the most obvious suspect, who didn't want the estate diminished.
- Kill It with Fire:
- How the draugs' cut-up remains are destroyed.
- The murderer attempts to kill Garrett by setting the barn he's in on fire.
- Mad Artist: Snake (from Old Tin Sorrows). A little bit of innate, unfocused magic, mixed with his insanity means that every painting of his has a bit of magic in it, for better or worse.
- Mammy: Cook, aside from being a half-troll rather than black.
- Manly Tears: Garrett at the end. It's completely justified due to the fact the General did such a monstrous thing to Eleanor and his daughter is equally bad.
- Medicine Show: Doc Doom, the exorcist, self-promotes by traveling with one of these. Despite the gaudy showmanship, he actually does prove competent. He manages to conjure Eleanor's ghost, solve the mystery, and banish her in the space of one day.
- No Name Given: Cook refuses to give any other name than Cook, even though Garrett pesters her about it.
- The Nose Knows: Morley claims to have located Garrett's room by following the "meat eater smell" - in a house shared by several other humans, no less - but it's not quite clear if he actually can do that or is just making up excuses to tease Garrett.
- Older Than They Look: Some of the nonhumans, such as Cook, have been around for many generations of humans.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Essentially, the only thing that can create a ghost or draugr is someone who feels this amount of hatred toward their murderer.
- Shout-Out:
- The scene where Garrett is hired is lifted intact from The Big Sleep. Another nod happens when the daughter turns out to be the murderer.
- Garrett's lasting feelings for Eleanor and his attachment to her portrait may be an oblique nod to Laura, albeit with a ghost rather than a woman whose death was mis-reported.
- Sleeping Dummy: Garrett leaves a blanket-covered suit of armor in his bed while he sneaks around the Stantnor mansion at night. And a good thing too: when he gets back, there's an ax buried in the armor.
- Strong Family Resemblance: The mysterious woman and Jennifer are able to pass for one another. Because the mysterious woman is the ghost of her mother.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The draugs are vengeance crazed monsters seeking to destroy Jennifer, but anyone will do..
