Hammers on Bone by Cassandra KhawMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
When a kid tries to hire John Persons to kill his stepfather, the private investigator is intrigued. Persons quickly determines the stepfather isn't of this earth. Sometimes, it takes a monster to kill a monster...
This was a Netgalley find.
The combination of noir and Lovecraftian horror is a hard one for me to pass up so I jumped on this one straight away.
John Persons is a private investigator in London and not entirely as he seems to be. When young Abel shows up, Persons is intrigued and quickly finds himself in over his head. As with most noir, every damn body is lying about something and Persons means to figure out what's going on, safety be damned!
Cassandra Khaw does a good job weaving the noir and Lovecraftian stuff together nicely. Her London is not pretty or safe. When John Persons is your best hope, you might as well give up...
This book was far from cyclopean in size but packed a lot into it's 100-ish pages. Those guys and gals at Tor.com sure know how to put out a novella. The ending was satisfying and left things open for more John Persons adventures. I was quite pleased with both John's true nature and that of the rest of the characters.
Hammers on Bone wasn't my favorite Lovecraftian detective tale but it was still damn good. I'll be thinking about it for nights to come. 3.5 out of 5 squamous stars.
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