With half of Sunder City looking for magic’s return and the other half struggling to move forward, Man for Hire Fetch Phillips is stuck in the middle, until an old friend returns from the dead.

The Plot: The Question of How to Move Forward
Ever since Fetch Phillips found a vampire who somehow managed to stay young after the Coda that stripped the world of magic, people have been coming to him asking if magic is coming back. Fetch doesn’t believe so, but a paying client is a paying client and he can’t afford to be choosy.

His cases are simple enough: make sure a deal doesn’t go south, find who murdered a wealthy Human businessman, find out what happened to an Elf’s dearly departed husband, keep a strange new machine that shoots little metal pieces hidden. Simple, but they lead him deep into the bowels of the city and out to far reaches where secrets are just waiting to be found, and into the cane of an old friend.

Soon, Fetch is doing more than simply being a Man for Hire. Hired, sure, but he starts to find his way, his feet, and discovers his own cause, one that will have past and present, Humans and magic, careening towards an inevitable clash.

Where the first book, The Last Smile in Sunder City, felt more like a noir mystery, that facade quickly fell away in this book. The world has been sufficiently set up. The main character’s history has been thoroughly examined. Now the real story can get going, and what a story it is!

Dead Man in a Ditch is more serious, and heavier than the first book. It’s not much of a mystery or PI novel. Fetch is a Man for Hire and the series simply revolves around him. In this volume, it’s possible to say the direction the series might take, but, considering how surprised I was by this book, it’s impossible to say for sure what Arnold has in mind as the series progresses. While I expected more mystery couched firmly in fantasy, like the first book, this exploded into something more. It’s about progress, moving forward after mourning, looking to the future while attempting to atone for sins that can’t be forgiven but merely moved past, and a clash of worlds as the Humans stealthily try to sneak in and take over. But there’s also the allure of the past, the idea that magic is still out there, might still come back.

As heavy as Dead Man in a Ditch is, it offers an incredible amount of food for thought. It forces the reader to look at the world and Fetch in a different light. Whatever the overarching story might be, it looks like it’s taken a darker turn in this second installment, but, somehow, there’s still glimmers of hope. We just have to rely on Fetch Phillips, Man for Hire.

The Characters: It’s Fetch’s Story
Fetch Phillips is our tired, desperate, more likable protagonist. He caused the Coda and has spent the six years since trying to atone for that. He’s made a lot of enemies, and some questionable friends, but at least he’s honest (unless he’s trying to get some information for a case). Pain seems to be the only price he’s willing to pay, but he’ll gladly pay it if only it can help him set the world aright.

Fetch wasn’t exactly likable in the first book. It was almost as though Arnold was pushing him to the edge of palatable. There wasn’t much to redeem him, but Dead Man in a Ditch presents him in a new light, one that makes me like him a little bit more. He’s as broken as everyone else, but maybe more so. His desperation is clear and might make the reader sympathetic. But he really does try, and that’s almost noble.

Fetch doesn’t really have a knack for making friends, but he certainly has some old friends, one of whom pops up out of nowhere and leads him deep into a revolution. But every other character, no matter how little we see of them, was interesting and fleshed out, and had some kind of story with Fetch, whether it was old, recent, or entirely new. He might not know how to make friends, but he certainly knows how to make enemies. Most of the characters managed to help paint Fetch in a stark light: he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but does it anyways. He has his job, but what kind of job is it, exactly? Though I did find a number of them fascinating and important to the story, it was also impossible for me to not believe they weren’t there to help show Fetch in a certain light.

The Setting: Bitterly Stark and Cold
Since Fetch works and lives in Sunder City, it is here we are returned to for this second novel. Now, it’s winter and the city is bitterly cold. It’s there in the shivering, the snow dusting the ground, the layers and layers of clothing everyone wears, the longing for the fires that once lit up and warmed the city. It’s stark and it’s sad. With magic gone, every magical creature has been hit hard and is now struggling to put their lives together. Since the first book perfectly, and at length, set up the world, Dead Man in a Ditch had the luxury of glossing back over the details and instead using stark, unapologetic language to describe the atmosphere and the desperation in the city.

It’s not just the city we see, but the land surrounding it as well. Fetch’s cases and questions lead him far out of the city, through forests and abandoned cities. It’s wild, scary, and sad, but, without magic, everyone has been forced to find a new way of living, or a way of just coping until their untimely, too early death occurs. In my mind, it felt dark, constantly overcast, freezing cold, and just utterly abandoned. It’s opener than the city, but still holds the same stark, sad truth.

Overall: A Worthy Second Installment
Overall, Dead Man in a Ditch is a worthy follow up to the first novel. It picks up where it left off, but presents the story in a different way. It was surprising to not get more of the same, the rapidly unraveling case couched in fantasy, but also refreshing. The world has undergone a massive change and this novel addresses it and provides solutions while also keeping the story open for further installments. It felt a little jumpy at first with so many different cases, but they quickly began to tie together, and then it took a great leap that spun the story a different way, though it still managed to neatly tie back together. The middle was a little slow and sometimes I just wanted Fetch and the story to just hurry up and stop wallowing, but I did enjoy the novel and look forward to what comes next.

Thank you to Angela Man at Orbit for a free e-copy. All opinions expressed are my own. ( )

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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WHAT'S DEAD MAN IN A DITCH ABOUT?
Fetch, Man for Hire, has two clients/cases this time out.

First, the police want his help—they have a corpse that appears to have been killed by magic. They're not broadcasting this idea, but that's the best theory they have. They figure this is more up Fetch's alley than theirs, they can't officially hire him, but they'll make sure that there's a solid reward ready for him if he can bring them answers.

The other case involves an older elf—her husband is missing, and is probably dead. She wants Fetch to figure out who killed him—even better, if Fetch can tell her why there are debt collectors from the wrong side of the tracks sniffing around...

There's not a lot of overlap in these cases, beyond the suggestion that there's still a little magic in the world, despite what everyone knows/assumes. Maybe this time Fetch will find the thing everyone wants.

TOO ON THE NOSE
There's a lot of material that's a commentary on the presence, use, and abuse of guns in the real world. Arnold was not subtle at all—I'm not saying he should've been, but it would've been a bit easier to take if he had. I really don't like authors taking a moment to do a PSA for whatever their cause is in the middle of a book.

Now, if they can work it in subtly? I don't mind, in fact, I'm frequently impressed by it (whether or not I agree with them). But this was a tad too blatant for me.

THE NARRATION
THere's got to be an advantage in narrating the audiobook for your own novel—you know how the strange names are pronounced already, you know exactly what tone is called for in each scene, and so on. On the other hand, you probably have to resist the impulse to do one more edit on each passage.

If you happen to be a pretty experienced actor, that has to be all the better.

Basically, I'm saying that Arnold is a perfect narrator for this and he did a bang-up job of it.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT DEAD MAN IN A DITCH?
I thought I liked this novel more than the first in the series—I actually still do, but I'm rating this lower (I would like to ask 2020 me a couple of questions). Focusing on the present, even if the past looms large over the present, allows Fetch's cases to mean more and be developed in a better, fuller sense.

I'm intrigued by the direction that Fetch seemed to be headed at the end here (although, I kind of thought that's where he was headed already), but let's never mind that.

I loved Fetch's inner monologues, the voice is fantastic and I could listen/read it all day. I'm not quite as on board with the story—it's good, just slow. Still, I'm glad I listened to this, and expect most fantasy/PI fans will be, too—particularly if they're fans of both genres.

I'm just going to repeat what I said last time, because it still applies (maybe more than last time). Do I recommend this book? Oh yeah. You'll probably like it more than I did (I'm a little worried about hitting "publish" on this, as I know I'm one of the less enthusiastic readers of this). And even if you don't, you'll be just as impressed as I am with Arnold's imagination and skill. ( )

When I checked this book out from the library, I was hoping for a private eye mystery type book, but set in a fantasy world. And it is, but while I was looking for something light and easy to read, this book is a bit too dark for what I wanted.

This isn't to say the book isn't badly written - it has an interesting story, an interesting city that is transitioning from a magic based reality to an industrial revolution type city. The backstory of how the protagonist turned on his friends to help the humans at the cost of all magic in the world (Not a spoiler) makes the book rather bleak.

The book is well written, with an interesting story, and interesting characters but not quite what I wanted to read.

“But Sunder City makes a few things without fail: hunger in winter, drunks at night and trouble all year round.”

Picking up a few months after The Last Smile of Sunder City ended, nothing much has changed for Fetch Phillips ‘Man For Hire’, but he is about to learn that his beloved adopted home, Sunder City, has been changing around him in Dead Man in a Ditch, the second urban fantasy novel from Luke Arnold.

When Fetch is asked by the police to examine a dead body in the Bluebird Lounge, and stunned to find the man has been killed with magic, since it’s been seven years since The Coda vanquished all magic from the world. Fletch believes the magic is lost forever, and he’s determined to prove it... but what if he’s wrong?

After establishing character and world building in the first novel, Dead Man in a Ditch has more action as Fetch moves between a variety of investigations, most of which lead him into trouble, from searching for an errant husband, to tracking the origins of a dangerous new machine, battling with a crazed unicorn, and hunting down a killer wizard. All roads eventually lead to a company looking to make their mark, and a battle to save the City.

That’s not say Arnold doesn’t continue developing both the world and his characters.
New characters are introduced, most notably a grifting werecat named Linda Rosemary, but it’s the unexpected return of Fetch’s former mentor, Hendricks, that has the most impact on the plot. Suffering from the effects of Magic’s withdrawal Hendricks is not the man, in body or spirit, that Fetch remembers, putting the two on an inevitable collision course.

Though perhaps a little long, the story is fast paced, with an entertaining mix of drama and dark humour. The City, and Fetch, are still rather dirty and bleak but there is a little light breaking through.

An imaginative and enjoyable sequel, I’m looking forward to Fletch’s next adventures in Sunder City. ( )