Grim Shadows

April 21, 2014
Lowe Magnusson is a brazen liar, and his scheming makes Bennett’s second Roaring Twenties romance much less satisfying than its predecessor, Bitter Spirits. Lowe, a kind of amoral Indiana Jones, cares about money and sex, in that order, and seeks both without inhibition. While on the lam, he encounters a funereally dressed woman on a train platform; he arranged the meeting for the purpose of bilking her and promptly forgot, but she refuses to miss her chance to recover a rare artifact in his possession. Archaeologist Hadley Bacall is as unpleasantly cold as Lowe is aggressively oversexed; when Lowe says “What a little snob you are,” the reader can only agree. Hadley is also every bit as self-centered in pursuing her career, albeit more constrained by social mores. There’s not a lot of potential joy in this setup. Glimpses of characters from the previous book coax a little warmth into the situation, but it never truly blazes into romance. Agent: Laura Bradford, Bradford Literary Agency.

May 15, 2014
Combining the derring-do of a treasure hunter and the cheeky chutzpa of a con artist, Lowe Magnusson, brother of the bootlegger in Bennett's first intrigue-laced, paranormal Roaring Twenties romance, Bitter Spirits (2014), returns to San Francisco with half of an antique amulet. Because he owes money to a gangster, Lowe intends to have a duplicate made to turn over to collector Archibald Bacall while selling the original. Blind, wheelchair-bound Archibald, however, wants more than just the amulet base and hires Lowe to find the four rays, or finishing pieces, that Archibald's dead wife has hidden somewhere in San Francisco. When Lowe learns that Archibald's demon-plagued daughter, Hadley, is also looking for the amulet, they reluctantly join forces. Lowe's sister-in-law, a professional seer, channels Hadley's mother, who complicates the search. As Lowe and Hadley work through the puzzles, while fighting off ancient Egyptian demons, they learn what true love is. Bennett plumbs the depths of a 1920s San Francisco beset with eerie overtones in her latest rollicking-good tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)