Books like Bitter Gold Hearts

3.5 starsI liked Garrett, the moment I met him and, having just checked, I still like him. The purpose of this review is more to acquaint you with him than it is to discuss this “case file.” I have seen this called “fantasy noir” but it could also be called fantasy detective fiction for reasons I will shortly describe. If you like Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin series or have recently dug into Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, you don’t need to be a talented shamus to draw a line between those two and discover that Cook was likely inspired by one and inspired the other. Garrett and the “Dead Man” are quite possibly the best extrapolation of Archie and Nero…. Though Garrett gets fewer girls than Archie and Nero moves around slightly more than the Dead Man. Here are some quotes that should “flesh out” the P.I. and his venue.On Garrett: " I’m what the guys who don’t like me call a peeper. An investigator and confidential agent, the way I put it. Pay me—up front—and I’ll find out things. More often than not, things you didn’t really want to know. I don’t dig up much good news. That’s the nature of the racket…All six feet two and two hundred pounds, poetry in motion. In a few weeks I’d be back to the old lean and mean I’d been when I was twenty and a crack Marine….Thirty isn’t old to somebody who is fifty, but when you’ve spent a few years making a career out of being lazy and the belly gets a little less washboard and the knees start creaking and you start puffing and wheezing halfway up a flight of stairs, you feel like maybe you’ve skipped the twenty in between."On the town in which he lives: "TunFaire is a human city, but just about every other species has an area of its own staked out. Some are a quarter unto themselves, like Ogre Town or Ratman Creek. Some occupy only one tenement. Even though some individuals may live anywhere in town, somewhere there’s a home turf that is fiercely defended…TunFaire is overcrowded and hagridden by poverty and hardly a day passes when somebody doesn’t whittle on somebody with a hatchet or do cosmetic surgery with a hammer…Macunado Street was belly button to elbow with dwarves and gnomes, ogres and imps, elves and whatever have you else, not to mention every human in the neighborhood. There wasn’t room for pigeons to fly because the pixies and fairies were zipping swooping overhead. Nobody in TunFaire was staying inside… "There is some character development over the course of these novels, but it is secondary to the action and mystery. Butcher does a much better job with the fantastic powers of non-humans, but that isn’t Cook’s focus. If you enjoy the crackling dialogue of a Sam Spade-like P.I. and the spot-on observations of human nature provided, then you should give this book/series a try. Here is something for those who want to go a bit further. http://wikivisually.com/wiki/Garrett_P.I.