Sweet Silver Blues is the first 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.
An old friend, gnomish veteran Denny Tate, dies in an accident and names Garrett the executor of his estate. Denny has amassed a vast fortune of one hundred thousand marks in silver and offers 10% of the fee to Garrett to deliver it to his ex-lover, Kayean Kronk.
This does not sit well with Denny's sister, Rose, nor with his former business partners. Garrett soon finds himself offered bribes, threats, and combinations of the two to leave the case alone. Unfortunately, Garrett refuses to do so as a matter of professional pride.
Journeying to the war ravaged region of Cantard, Denny has to find the mysterious Kayean Kronk and why no one is willing to speak of her even among immediate family. Garrett's only allies are his vegetarian assassin friend, Morley, his undead business partner Dead Man, and two very smelly grolls.
The book successfully inverts the formula of many Urban Fantasy novels by placing a more or less mundane Private Investigator in a world full of supernatural creatures as well as Medieval Stasis setting.
The book is followed by Bitter Gold Hearts.
Sweet Silver Blues contains the following tropes:
- Alien Catnip: Morley bribes a tribe of brownies with rock candy to get them to spy for him. The brownies are later seen lying all over the graveyard, giggling and stoned to the gills on sugar.
- Bittersweet Ending: The first book in the series has shades of this and ends with Garrett Drowning his sorrows.
- Boom, Headshot!: A female vampire is shot in the forehead by a crossbow bolt, which doesn't finish her off but does scramble her brains and leave her thrashing helplessly on the cave floor. Garrett himself pegs a shapeshifter this way in Faded Steel Heat, but it too survives, recovering rapidly once its malleable flesh expels the projectile.
- Cartwright Curse: Morley warns Garrett in Sweet Silver Blues that this trope seems to apply to Kayean Kronk.
- Continuity Nod: The stunt Morley pulls at the end with the vampire in a crate gets referenced in several later novels, up to and including Wicked Bronze Ambition, thirteen books and sixteen real years later.
- Corrupt Church: Played with. The local priest, Father Rhyne, is honest and good natured but the Sahir is an undercover Venageti agent.
- Covers Always Lie: The first book in the series shows several characters holding submachineguns, and has a light switch visible on a wall. The series takes place in a high fantasy world with full-on Medieval Stasis.
- Damsel in Distress: Kayean Kront's rescue forms the basis of the latter third of the book. They succeed but not without significant cost.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Despite Morley's predictions this will happen once Garrett meets Kayean Kronk he refuses to ever visit her as he's creeped out by her near-brush with vampirism.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Garrett manage to recover Kayean Kronk and save her from vampirism but only after many harrowing battles as well as the death of both her brother as well as husband. Garett uses his newfound wealth to buy a mansion for him and Dead Man while Morley uses Kayean's brother to kill his creditors.
- False Rape Accusation: Rose Tate threatens this when Garrett refuses to conspire with her against Denny's heir, but Garrett retorts that he can afford a magical truthsaying to debunk any such claim.
- Fantastic Noir: The story starts with the premise of Garrett being expected to execute the will of a friend before turning into a monster hunt.
- Fantastic Racism: Played straight and subverted. The grolls suffer from racism by numerous individuals they meet along the way but everyone, including Garrett, considers vampires to be pure evil by their nature (and they're right).
- Fate Worse than Death: Vampirism turns you into a mind-controlled slave of a master vampire as well as a homicidal psychopath. It also results in your automatic excommunication from the predominate faith.
- Gender-Blender Name: Doris and Marsha. Because they're eighteen-foot-tall grolls, nobody's had the nerve to point it out to them.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Rose and Tinnie plan to kill Kayean as well as frustrate Garrett's attempts to find her via violence but both get nowhere. Garrett even starts dating the latter.
- Interspecies Romance: Very common with Denny Tate, a gnome, dating Kayean, a human. Garrett, a human, eventually ends up with Tinnie.
- Love Makes You Evil: Kayean Kronk willingly followed her husband and brother into vampirism.
- Mission Control: The Major ends up doing this to try to rid Cantard of its vampire problem.
- Shout-Out: After the end, the continuing household dynamic of Garrett (Archie Goodwin), the Dead Man (Nero Wolfe) and Dean (Fritz Brenner) is set up.
- The Stoner: Barbera, an ex-army loser whom Vasco's crew sic on Garrett in Sweet Silver Blues. Licks, a musician whom Saucerhead briefly works for is also a heavy weed user.
- Unusual Euphemism: Some slang terms for interspecies sexual practices are mentioned.
- Unicorn: Sweet Silver Blues inverts their benign image. Our heroes are barely able to survive a stampede of them and they fight to the death for little to no reason.
