Bogart and Bacall, Garrett, Jill and Maya this is a cross between the Big Sleep and Nero Wolfe with the fat man Wolfe replaced by the Dead Man, Fritz by Dean. And while it's all been done before it's never been done this way in the town of TunFaire with dark elves street assassins, trolls, dwarfs, and gods.

Recommended to anyone who looking for a hard boiled mystery in a very different setting.

edit** 7/11/17 reread, just as good as I remembered, after recently reading Black Company, I wanted to see if Garrett still had his old magic and he's still my favorite fantasy detective. ( )

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Title: Cold Copper Tears
Series: Garrett, PI #3
Author: Glen Cook
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 249
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Garrett is taking it easy, what with all the success from previous cases. However, a sultry blonde perks his interest, especially when it is obvious she is hiding the real reason for coming to him. Then the Grand High Inquisitor of the Church comes to Garrett, wanting to hire him. After accepting these two curious cases, Garrett is suddenly assaulted. For no reason that he can tell.

He gets some help from the major Crime Boss, who is then assaulted by a godlike being. Garrett, with some help from some potions from an earlier client, drives it off, thus continuing the debt of gratitude the Crime Boss owes him.

After lots of action, and a street girl suddenly becoming his understudy and claiming she's going to marry him, Garrett puts it all together. A long dead, malevolent loghyr, has been masquerading as a god of destruction so long that it has come into being. Garrett tracks down the loghyr, informs the Crime Boss, and let's nature take its course. A loghyr body might not decompose but it sure can be eaten by hungry rats!

Garrett is richer than ever. But now he has to figure out what do with the street girl and with Tinnie. Garrett isn't the marrying kind.

My Thoughts:

I had fun reading this. I didn't bother to try to figure out anything ahead of time. I just sat back, let Garrett get the crap beat out of him, watched him beat the crap out some others and generally had a fantastic old time.

The humor continues to work for me, Garrett hasn't annoyed me yet and his womanizing hasn't crossed the line yet either. I do have to say, that is what caused this book to stay at 3 1/2 stars instead of moving up to 4. Poor Garrett gets ambushed in his own bed by the street girl (well, she's 18...). I'm getting the feeling that Female X will show up for a book or three and then shove off. I was kind of hoping that Tinnie would move into friendship territory and become a regular part of the cast. Not looking too promising at the moment.

My other gripe is the tired old cliché about gods taking their power from their believers, etc, etc. This story is dealing with gods and churches and what not, so while I was kind of expecting it, it just really hit me wrong this time. As I was reading through I had ask myself what kind of person worships a god that they themselves have created? What's the point? Made me glad I'm a Christian who serves the One True God. He's said He's the only God. So either it is true and I'm all set, or it is a lie and I've got nothing to fear from a being that can lie about Reality itself. Despair, yes, but not Fear.

Cook writes well here and as long as he doesn't start recycling story lines (something I can see happening with 14'ish books in the series) I don't foresee any problems with continuing on until the end. Of course, the series did kind of peter out in '13, so I'm only getting closer and closer to landmine territory with each new book.

My goodness, for a book I thoroughly enjoyed, I certainly rained on it enough didn't I?

★★★☆½ ( )

It's hard to write a good sci fi or fantasy mystery. It's easy to fall into the trap of relying too heavily on the world to solve the mystery. The second book in this series, [b:Bitter Gold Hearts|1037242|Bitter Gold Hearts (Garrett P.I., #2)|Glen Cook|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388274715s/1037242.jpg|286163] did better in that respect, but this book falls more in line with the first in the series, [b:Sweet Silver Blues|400878|Sweet Silver Blues (Garrett P.I., #1)|Glen Cook|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1297624038s/400878.jpg|1394270]. The titles are still awesome though.

However, if you are a fan of the Dresden Files, this series is probably worth checking out. My criticisms of the Dresden Files are similar to my criticisms of this series, so if the same things don't bother you in one series they probably won't bother you in the other. And hey, Cook did it first. ( )

Very enjoyable read. ( )

See Sweet Silver Blues. ( )