bellinghman | #99 Mike Carey: Vicious Circle

Mike Carey: Vicious Circle

Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Orbit (5 Oct 2006)
ISBN-10: 1841494143
Category(ies): Horror (it says). Well, demons, ghosts, zombies ...

Back in this review, I talked about The Devil You Know, which is the first Felix Castor novel. This is the second.

Castor is still lodging with Pen. Rafi is still possessed by the demon Asmodeus. But Castor is beginning to change, and he's no longer happy to advertise himself as an exorcist - now, he wants to be Felix Castor, Spiritual Services. His first job is soon on its way - a couple want him to find their daughter. Their dead daughter, whose ghost has gone missing. Meanwhile, Castor's work-experience understudy has spread her wings and gone into business on her own.

Oh, and the Met want to make use of his services. And there seems to be an epidemic of murders going on in London. Perhaps it's only a good thing is that Juliet is off working on her own, because the last thing he needs is to be fatally distracted by a woman so sexy she can give a zombie a hard-on.

The plot works like a well oiled piece of precision machinery. And yet, there is also character development, so by the end of it, Castor isn't in the same place as when he started. Carey does a nice job of evoking right-up-to-date London: he almost had me convinced that there's a building in the middle of a roundabout on Castlebar Hill, and that's a road I've both walked and driven along before now (we lived half a mile away till 2002).