Mythology – The Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society Miscellanea and Ephemeron

Lore and Dysorder: The Hell’s Detective Mysteries
By Patrick Thomas
Padwolf Publishing 2011
Book purchased by Reviewer

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

Sure, and if it isn’t another fine book by that fine Irish laddie, Patrick Thomas! This one is about another of the regulars at Bullfinch’s Bar, a forgotten Sumerian fire god who goes by the name Negral. He’s the chief of Hell’s secret police, 666th Precinct, who channels Humphrey Bogart. I kid you not; Negral is such a big Bogie fan that he manifests himself as a tall, dark man in a suit wearing a trench coat and a fedora. He talks tough like Bogie too, and doesn’t bother to tell his suspects their Miranda Rights. That’s because most of them are the damned souls who inhabit Hell, or the demons who own them. Satan thinks so highly of him that he gave him the right to investigate and interrogate any resident of Hell, answering only to His Satanic Majesty.
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The Narrows
By Alexander C. Irvine
Published by Del Rey, a division of Random House Publishing Group, 2005, released in paperback 2010
ISBN: 9780345466983
Advance review copy provided by the publisher.

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

This book should have been a delightful revisionist historic fantasy. Set during World War II in Detroit, the protagonist, Jared Cleaves, is a young man working in one of Henry Ford’s factories (Building G, near the center of the Ford River Rouge factory complex) manufacturing golems for the war effort. So why did I find it such a long, tedious read? Well, first there’s Jared’s rah-rah attitude about the war; he’s deferred from the draft because of a childhood injury to his hand that left him unable to hold a gun. He’s depressed because he actually wants to be at the front, shooting Nazis and getting shot at, to prove his manhood.
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