Occultober Day 5 The Lucius Fogg Series by Dan Wickline
Occultober Day 5 The Lucius Fogg Series by Dan Wickline
Urban fantasies are a rapidly growing segment of the spooky stories that compose Occultober. Most urban fantasies are mysteries focusing either upon tension in the supernatural community or frictions between the supernatural and mundane communities. A lot of the fun in reading them—especially early books in a series—comes from figuring out how the supernatural community works and why it hasn’t overrun the mundane community yet.
Enter Dan Wickline’s Lucius Fogg series. It’s built upon the Nero Wolfe model established by the amazing Rex Stout. Lucius Fogg is a master sorcerer—perhaps the greatest alive in post World War II New York City—but he has one significant restraint on his power. If he takes even one step outside of his home, he will die. To get around this difficulty, he employs private detective Jimmy Doyle to do his legwork for him as he investigates supernatural phenomenon that catch his interest.
Jimmy Doyle is a World War II vet who took a bullet to the head and spent three months in a coma. He only woke up because Fogg sent a magical pendant to him which a nurse hung around his neck. Now he has a metal plate in his head together with a strong sense of justice. He’s also got a lot of attitude that makes you wonder why he doesn’t get slugged more by the men he provokes.
The final piece of background that is critical to understanding this series is that most Americans do not believe in the supernatural even though quite a few of those creatures live among them. A lot of that ignorance is made possible by the Compact. The relative peace that New York City enjoys was built upon a compact between Fogg, the chief vampire and werewolf of New York, and a famous hunter who had been trying to kill off all the supernatural creatures in the city. This compact kept NYC from breaking out into total war at the price of Old Town (about thirty blocks of the city) being turned over to the supernaturals. New Yorkers believe this is an area of such tremendous crime that not even the police go there, but those in the know understand the truth. There’s a kingdom within New York City where mortal law does not hold sway and a lot of what Fogg and Doyle do is try to make certain that the supernatural problems stay in Old Town so the rest of the city can ignore the threat posed by their neighbors.
You can read my reviews of the individual books of this series here: https://www.gilbertstack.com/lucius-fogg. I just wish Dan Wickline would sit down and write a few more of them, but in the meantime, he’s arranged for book 1, Deadly Creatures, to be free on Amazon from October 5 to October 9 at this link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...
If you’re interested in Lucius Fogg, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...
