An Urban Fantasy book by Vincent Holland-Keen, telling a story of a peculiar private detective - for example, he found that butterfly which started the hurricane that hit the town last week. Thomas Locke can find anything, the only problem is what's going to happen once he does. And in a world where people reincarnate as kitchen appliances, old ladies roam the city in search of wrongs to be set right and where life insurance actually guarantees you a new life, the consequences of your actions can be hard to determine. It's not exactly a Detective Drama - while there's a detective and sometimes an investigation, the case being solved is not always the actual mystery.
This book is a mix of Neil Gaiman's style of presentation and Douglas Adams' humour and absurd. It skirts pretty close to black comedy genre, without getting too desperate - if anything it's simply funny, without being too optimistic about the world.
This series provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Veronica Drysdale who start with murder of her husband, and carries on from there. She's not a bloodthirsty murderer though, she's just not afraid to use force when necessary.
- I Am Legion: The Company
- Living Shadow: Lafarge
- Odd Friendship: between Thomas and Veronica. They don't really have anything in common, but circumstances put them together and force to cooperate.
- Our Monsters Are Different: Billy's friend are the horrors from under the bed - but they're friendly to Billy
- Right-Hand Cat: Fiddlesticks. Although in the end it turns out that it was the brain behind the justice operation all time long.
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Magnificent Bastard: Vincent Drysdale - Memory-Wiping Crew: memekers. And you get a fancy bibelot in exchange, win-win!
- Parental Neglect: Veronica's parents, big time.
- Tentacle Rope: Umivatore - and its tentacles are the least scary part of it
