Rosemary and Rue- Seanan McGuire

Rosemary and Rue
Seanan McGuire
Daw, Sep 2009, $7.99
ISBN 9780756405717

In San Francisco private investigator Toby Daye is a half-breed part human and part fae. She avoids magic like it’s the plague having spent fourteen years as a fish following an investigation that turned ugly. She refuses cases that have even a potential taint of magic.

However, in spite of her avoidance doctrine, a female elf in her dying last breath curses Toby who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The elf’s last wish is for Toby to uncover who murdered her; if she fails Toby will die quite painfully. With an incentive like that, Toby makes inquires that lead to magical and mundane assassination attempts. If she survives the attempts to kill her, she still has to survive the killing curse with her time running out or she will die anyway.

This is a super new urban noir fantasy that will remind readers of Cast A Deadly Spell though six decades later and just less than 400 miles to the north. The story line is fast-paced from the opening scene as readers meet the magic-phobic half-breed heroine who does not want to be tied in knots as the incredible Ms. Limpet and never slows down as she works a particularly nasty personalized case. ROSEMARY AND RUE is a winner in a sub-genre that has been butchered recently with zillions of imitations.

Harriet Klausner