Hot Lead, Cold Iron

Starred review from March 10, 2014
In this gripping fantastical investigation, Marmell (The Goblin Corps) creates an engaging world and an unlikely hero. Mick Oberon is a gumshoe in 1930s Chicago, a world of Prohibition-fueled lawlessness, corrupt politicians, and rapidly advancing technology. The wife of a mafia boss hires him to find her daughter, who has been missing—replaced by a changeling—for 16 years. The cold case soon gets hot, and Oberon unravels a crime that leads him back to the courts of the Fae. This harrowing adventure moves effortlessly between the mortal world and the magical Chicago Otherworld. The potent mix of gangsters, magic, Fae politics, and a strega on the warpath makes for a ride that never touches the brakes. Marmell expertly maximizes the thrills, leaving the reader with a lingering desire for a magic wand and a glass of warm milk.

March 15, 2014
Start of a new fantasy series set in mobster-era Chicago, from the author of The Conqueror's Shadow (2010, etc.). Mick Oberon slouches and snarls like any hard-boiled PI--but to go with the fedora and threadbare overcoat, he has pointy ears and packs a wand. As a Fae, he's far harder to kill than any human gumshoe. With the exception of warm milk, he rejects human food and drink and rubs along accepting favors and oddments rather than money for his services. Like all Fae, he can't abide pure iron or modern technology--cars cause him agony, and he can barely tolerate the "El." He has the useful ability to add to his own luck and subtract it from the bad guys, thus causing his opponent to trip over his own shoelaces at the crucial instant. But now, with his landlord in trouble with the bank, he needs a serious payday. The daughter of mobster couple Fino and Bianca Ottati was snatched 16 years ago and replaced with a changeling, and Bianca wants her real daughter back. The cold trail leads inevitably to the Fae world and its ruling Seelie Court, where Mick has few friends. Complicating the picture is Bianca's mother-in-law, Donna Orsola Maldera, an extremely powerful witch with her own secret agenda, who considers Mick to be the devil himself. To get the information he needs, Mick might have to make his own Unseelie-style deal with the devil. Intriguing and sufficiently original as this is, the overly familiar backdrop--with its gangland cant and real-life mobster references--detracts from, rather than enhances, the proceedings. Only when Marmell focuses on the matter at hand does the narrative really start drawing readers in. Mick's no Bogart, but he gets the job done.

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March 15, 2014

While urban fantasies often like to lean on noir conventions, Marmell (The Conqueror's Shadow) goes one better by actually setting his novel in 1930s Chicago, with a PI facing down gangsters. But there's a twist: PI Mick Oberon is one of the fae, and his case involves tracking down a changeling. Mick is reluctant to take the case, dealing as it does with a capo in the Outfit, but he's really unhappy when he realizes that to solve the case he will have to travel to the Seelie Court. VERDICT The parallels that Marmell draws between the criminal underworld and the fairy otherworld are clever, if occasionally too obvious. Mick is funny and winning as a regular joe trying to stay out of local and fae politics, but his habit of addressing rhetorical questions to the reader and explaining his own jokes irritate over time. The slang and the period details are a lot of fun, though.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2014
Mick Oberon, who made his debut in a 2011 short story, makes his first appearance in a full-length novel. And it's a real corker, too. Oberon, a private eye in 1930s Chicago, has a secret: he's a faerie prince. Well, technically, he used to be a faerie prince: he walked away from his world, stepped sideways into our world, and now he's just trying to make it day to day in a place that is, in so many ways, scary and depressing (but he believes it's still better than the place he left behind). When he's approached by the wife of a local mobster, Mick is surprised to find out that she wants him to solve a special kind of missing-person case: the woman's daughter, she says, was replaced 16 years ago by a changeling. And she wants Mickshe's somehow aware of his special magical abilitiesto find out who took her. But to do so, Mick must return to the Otherworld and confront a past he really hoped he'd left behind for good. The author leaves the door wide open for a sequel, and that's just fine: the book is thoroughly entertaining, and Mick is a likable guy with whom we'd enjoy spending some more time. Urban-fantasy fans should be all over this one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)