Exorcizamus te, omnis immunde spiritus.

So, in a moment I've been kind of dreading for a while now, particularly since Abracadaver was published in 2014, and Goldzilla has been announced yet not released, I did finish Laura Resnick's most recent Esther Diamond novel.

Picking up right after the ending of The Misfortune Cookie, we start at the end of Chinese New Year with John Chen, the funeral home worker dragging an exhausted Max, Lucky, and Esther back to the mortuary where a recently prepared corpse has just tried to walk out. While this might have lead into a rehash of the zombies in Unsympathetic Magic, it instead focuses on Lopez's partner Quinn, and his oppression by a very old demon. (How old? It speaks pre-Christ Aramaic.)

Given the indie film Esther was working on previously has folded production, Esther is quite pleased that Crime & Punishment: The Dirty Thirty wants her to reprise her role as Jilly C-Note, the bisexual hooker. Also gives her an excuse to sent the show's star, Nolan, to shadow Lopez and Quinn to figure out what the demon is plotting.

While th ebook features much of the same increasingly bizarre situations that make the series so much fun to read, there's a really large fight between Lopez and Esther that's really hard to make it through.

And eventually, we get resolution, sort of rushed, but satisfying none the less.

Unlike other books in the series, this one is not particularly focused on one Manhattan neighborhood. Instead, we're much more focused on the interpersonal relationships of the characters and how the supernatural tends to affect those relationships.

I hope Goldzilla eventually sees release, since I'd really hate to see the series end here.

May you live in interesting times.

So, we begin Laura Resnick's The Misfortune Cookie in the week after Christmas, as she's busy cursing herself for consummating her relationship with Connor Lopez, who has yet to call her after the events. So, given her restaurant job is off again at the moment due to the number of art majors home from college for the holidays and her lack of auditions due to the holidays, she's not very happy. Stella, her employer at the restaurant, calls her to ask if she'd like a New Year's Eve shift. Which starts with Esther turning over a new leaf, vowing to forget about Lopez. Who promptly arrives right after midnight to bust Stella for money laundering. One small fight with Lopez during the bust lands Esther in jail for assaulting an officer, as well as letting their secrets out of the bag in front of the Gambello Family and most of the Mafia investigating squad of the NYPD.

Her friend Lucky, the Gambello hit man, manages to escape the bust and goes undercover in Chinatown, living with family friends at a funeral home that serves Italian funerals on one side and Chinese funerals on the other. He contacts Esther and Max after the mysterious death of Benny Yee, a fairly high up member of one of the Tongs.

Seems Benny got a cursed fortune cookie that caused, well misfortune.

While investigating at the funeral, Esther manages to land a role in John Lee's indie movie, which gets her deeper into the Chinatown mystery.

Eventually, towards the climax, Lopez gets a Misfortune cookie, Esther and Max solve the mystery, and the climax comes during the Chinese New Year parade.

It's an enjoyable volume, filled with bits of history about the formation of New York's Chinatown and its gradual expansion across Canal Street into Little Italy. I'm also a bit sad, since after the next volume, there isn't anymore currently in the series.

Good, if quick read, that left me craving dumplings.

Christmas in April

It was a bit out of season to be reading Laura Resnick's Polterheist, since it's set in and around Manhattan at Christmas, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the further misadventures of poor Esther Diamond.

With shifts at Bella Stella down due to the number of college kids on break and no auditions on the horizon, Esther is forced to take a job at Fenster & Co., a large department store famous for its elaborate Christmas displays. As Dreidel, the Hanukkah Elf. Along for the ride are her ex, Jeff (known as Diversity Santa), and Satsy (Drag Queen Santa). We open a few days before Christmas, as various seasonal employees have gone missing along with their costumes.

The first sign that Evil is afoot in the store comes fairly early on as first Satsy gets attacked by a demonic laugh that burns off his Santa suit in the Employee freight elevator, followed closely by Esther getting attacked by a talking tree she sings duets with. Which instead of nice things like "Deck the Halls" instead starts talking about wanting her flesh and blood.

Which is about the time her sort of almost ex-boyfriend Detective Connor Lopez walks into the store. Who's investigating truck hijacking that the media seems to think is related to an old feud between the Fenster family and the Gambello family. Which is about the point Lucky Gambello shows up, since it's not the Gambellos. We also meet all the dysfunctional Fensters, including Elspeth, who knows Dreidel from her stint in The Vampyre.

Any rate, it's about halfway through the book before Max and Nelli show up. Thinking what ever is going on at Fenster's is a Poltergeist, Esther sneaks in Lucky and Max as the elves Sugarplum and Belsnickel. (Max poses as a Blind Elf, which allows him to disguise Nelli as the seeing eye reindeer.)

Which leads in to Esther being attacked by Karaoke Bear the next day at work. Trying to save a customer from the really animated singing bear, she manages to make the saving look like assault. Sadly, Carlos, the customer turns out to be Lopez's father. His wife beats Esther with her purse. Which is a unique way to meet the parents.

Any rate, the last act unfolds, and everything gets resolved in the normal manner.

Followed by a really surprising development that I'm sure will be revisited in Misfortune Cookie.

Overall, the book is a very funny and well written piece, although the reveal and resolution aren't particularly a surprise. There's a distinct lack of red herrings throughout the central narrative. On the othe rhand, Lopen and Esther are actually talking about events from previous books and sharing perspective finally, so that's a good thing.

While not the best book in the series, I can think of worse additions to series fiction by other authors.

Asaka, grow me a garden

Finished Laura Resnick's Unsympathetic Magic on lunch today, which was odd, since I read the book that comes directly after this one prior to reading this one. (Long story short. The library didn't have this one, but they did have the next one, so I read book 4 while waiting for Amazon to ship me this one.) Anyway, this lead to a minor issues of sort of knowing some of the events that happen in this book prior to reading it.

Esther, our actress narrator, is filming a guest role on The Dirty Thirty, a spin off of her world's Law & Order. In her case, this means she's filming around Mount Morris in Harlem while dressed as a bisexual junkie hooker getting pumped for information from a dirty cop. Her mother is thrilled. Sadly, the gentleman she's filming with gets sick in the middle of filming, and Esther tries following the crew to a place advertising the best fried chicken in Harlem. (Much is made over this, since it seems most restaurants in the neighborhood advertise that they have the best fried chicken in Harlem.)

Since it is Esther, instead of finding the fried chicken place, she instead runs across a black guy with a rapier, demonic gargoyles, and a sick man with a severed hand which isn't bleeding. Understandably freaked out, she tries to get help, which ends up with her getting arrested for solicitation, but not before the gargoyles grab her purse.

Lopez, her ex almost lover bails her out, but Esther gets Max involved in trying to figure out what's going on, which ends up involving a complex plot involving a Bokor, zombies, and half the Petro aspects of the Vodoun pantheon. Oh yes, and a rather large boa constrictor named Napoleon.

Now, while I've never set foot in a hounfour (the ritual space of Vodou, and honestly, I haven't lived anywhere where such a thing would be open for the curious), my love of horror movies did lead me down some rather strange research paths at various point. What she presents here seems to follow most of that research, although as is pointed out, New Orleans Vodou and Haitian Vodou  might share commonalities, but they do have different foci. Plus, given the number of syncretic traditions floating around the Caribbean (all of which are oral traditions), there's a lot to work with. And her presentation of Lopez becoming a cheval (horse, possessed by a loa) for Ogoun reflects some of what I've seen places. (Don't ask. I'd hate to lie.)

(Also, for casual readers, the title is a play on the term sympathetic magic, or the idea that something that belongs to a person [fingernail clipping, hair, etc] forms a link to that person, which can then be used to influence that person. AKA, the magic used in making 'voodoo dolls' or poppets.)

Honestly though, this is a fun and quick read and a welcome break from dystopian societies.

I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you until you love me

I'm debating what the best comparison for Laura Resnick's Vamparazzi is, a game of Are you a Werewolf? or Murder on the Orient Express. (Which is sadly, book 4 in the Esther Diamond series, but the library doesn't have Unsympathetic Magic, which meant buying it, and it hasn't shown up as of yet.)

Esther, our favorite New York actress, is evidently still on the outs with her ex almost boyfriend, Lopez, after events in said missing volume. She does, however, have a paying gig in a high profile off Broadway show in Greenwich Village based on John William Polidori's The Vampyre, starring against Daemon Ravel, self described Vampire, complete with a spokesgig for Nocturne, red wine based coolers that resemble blood. Playing the tormented protagonist, Aubrey, is Leischneudel Drysdale, who also escorts Esther to the theater most nights to avoid the "Vamparazzi", the legion of "vampires" and "vampire hunters" hanging around outside the theater, all of whom seemed obsessed with Daemon. Rounding out the cast as the nubile ingenue, Ianthe, is Mad Rachel, who tends to spend most of her time off stage yelling as loudly as possible at people on her cell phone backstage. Even during the big seduction scene of Esther's Jane, which is supposed to be the big climax. Backstage, we have Fiona, the icy wardrobe mistress; Bill, the bipolar stage manager; Victor, Daemon's personal assistant; and Tarr, the tabloid reporter attached to Daemon to help publicize Daemon's career.

As we open, approaching Halloween, Esther's covering up the black eye she received the night prior from one of the crazed "Jane"s, a woman who dresses up as Esther's character, along with a multitude of other women obsessed with Daemon, who tend to think being exsanguinated is romantic. (Later on, Esther and the audience get a less...biased...view of the whole vampire arousal.)

However, not that far into the book, the Jane that assaulted Esther is found dead, drained of blood, and in an underground tunnel. Given that she was last seen getting into Daemon's limo the night prior....

What follows is a mixture of good mystery and a hint of farce, as everyone's real motivations get revealed throughout the narrative. It's well written, funny, and very engaging reading.

Mmm, lasagna does sound good.

Well, as sort of promised, I did track down the next book in Laura Resnick's Esther Diamond series recently. Due to a bunch of personal stuff, this review is going up a few days late, but ya know, here we go.

Doppelgangster picks up with Esther's stage show being cancelled, requiring her to start working on Mulberry St. in Lower Manhattan at a place called Bella Stella, where the wait staff sings upon customer request. Most of the clientele are Made Men. (For those not in the know, Mulberry St. is in the heart of Little Italy. Try as I could, I never did make it there when I was in New York last week.) This creates conflict with her sort of boyfriend, Detective Lopez, since he's now part of the Organize Crime team with the NYPD.

However, things get off to an ugly start when first she serves Chubby Charlie, then runs into Chubby Charlie again after her shift is over, as he's walking into Bella Stella with no memory at all of having been in there the first time. The next night, he's in again, terrified, having seen his perfect doppio, which to him, means certain death. A prediction that comes true, since he winds up being shot by an impossible bullet in the middle of the entree.

This gets Esther back in with Max and a man named Lucky, and thanks to a play on words, the perfect doubles running around become known as Doppelgansters. (Given the doubles are mostly of mafia folks, it plays well with the original term, doppelganger.)

Things continue to go south throughout the book, as doubles of major characters show up, people die as a prelude to a mob war, and Esther keeps getting threatened with a Material Witness warrant by Lopez's boss. Not that Lopez is happy about Esther running around with the mob, but ya know.... When Evil is running amok, so are Esther and Max.

A fun entry, even if I did figure out one of the parties responsible as well as how the doppios were being created well before the narrative did. Will have top start tracking down more of the series when I get my personal crap better straightened out.

I never said he was a good illusionist...

A while back, I picked up Laura Resnick's Disappearing Nightly at one of the local Half Price Books locations. However, until here recently, I never bothered reading it, which as I found out, was a minor mistake.


We meet Esther, a waitress who currently has an acting gig off-Broadway as a nymphy in Sorcerer!, a show built around a magician. She's understudying for Golly Gee, a pop tart trying to further her career. Problem being, during the show's finale, Golly Gee, disappears in the crystal cage, but vanishes completely from within the confines of the box.

This leads to what are first taken as threatening notes from someone signing only his initials to the letters, which Esther takes to Detective Lopez, the man investigating the vanishing.

However, the notes are actually from Max, a 300 year old Mage, who's supposed to be the occult guardian of the 5 boroughs.

He's concerned because Golly isn't the first woman to actually vanish in recent days during an act and not reappear. In fact, we have the assistants for a drag queen, a condom salesman doing magic as a hobby, a Wall Street broker trying to become a magician, and a Vegas act trying to stage a comeback. (The Vegas guy actually has both his assistant AND his tiger vanish during his act.)

It's a fun read, as Lopez becomes the straight man, love interest, and suspicious third party in Esther's life as the mystery goes on. Max's supervisor in the occult chain of command comes in from Altoona, PA, and plays Wesley Wyndham-Price to Max's Giles. And even in some fairly serious moments, there's quite a bit of humor floating around.

Esther, unlike some heroines in series like this, currently has nothing supernatural about her. (There's evidently more books in the series, so I can't formally say if this continues to be true or not.) She's also culturally Jewish, struggling to pay rent, and uses Ben & Jerry's as therapy for stress. It's kind of nice to read a humorous Urban Fantasy novel that doesn't start off with a main character already one step above normal human, not part of some great occult conspiracy, etc.

So yeah, I'll probably be tracking down more of the series over time.