[Gumshoe 01] • The Gumshoe, the Witch, and the Virtual Corpse

"Welcome to 21st century Atlanta.

During your stay, depending on your tastes, you can cruise gay midtown (I hear that the Inquisition Health Club has introduced manacles and chains to the aerobics class) or check out the Reverend-Senator Stonewall's headquarters at Freedom Plaza (watch out for the Christian Militia guarding it, though) or attend a sky-clad Wiccan sabbat (by invitation only).

Avoid the courthouse, where the Cherokee have turned out in full war-paint to renegotiate a nineteenth century land deal.

Also stay away from all cemeteries, at least until the police find out why someone is disinterring and crucifying corpses.

As you can tell, this is a lively novel, full of intricate plotting and engaging off-beat characters. Among the latter are a gay detective, a Wiccan family, an ambitious televangelist with an eye on the White House, an artist whose medium is flesh and blood, a Cherokee drag queen--and then there's poor Benji, who would just like to make it to his fifteenth birthday, assuming the MIBS don't get him first or his Baptist parents don't ground him for life because his new girlfriend is a witch.

Oh yes, I enjoyed this novel. Very much. It's a deft, unusual combination of mystery, social commentary, fantasy, and humor. I couldn't have told you where it was going until the last chapter, but I kept reading faster and faster to find out.

--P.C. Hodgell