Whispering Nickel Idols by Glen Cook

Whispering Nickel Idols (Garrett Files #11) by Glen Cook

This is the best motivation for Garrett to get involved in a problem since Sweet Silver Blues. In that one, he was asked to locate his first great love. In this one, he is asked to pay his debt to very scary mob boss Chodo Contague by helping to find out if he’s really in a poison-induced coma (with the poisoner being Chodo’s equally scary daughter who is a sometime Garrett-love-interest. What makes this so good is that Garrett always fought not to become Chodo’s man, and yet the genius crime lord succeeded in using Garrett’s own code to reel him in.

 

So Garrett is investigating something he wants no part of and then things get really crazy. Someone is making people spontaneously combust. There is another flock of weird cultists in town and they are not happy with Garrett. There are some magic cats (which I think people should have realized earlier really were magic, but what the heck). And there’s the requisite mysterious woman in the background tied in unclear ways to everything that is happening.

 

Cook is on his game again in the eleventh book of the series, making me anxious to get to book twelve.