An Affair of Sorcerers

When a circus-performer-turned-PI is drawn into the occult underworld, the result is “beautifully plotted and assured” (#1 New York Times–bestselling author Peter Straub).
 
With a genius IQ, a past career as a circus acrobat, and a black belt in karate, criminology professor Dr. Robert Frederickson—better known as “Mongo the Magnificent”—has a decidedly unusual background for a private investigator. He also just so happens to be a dwarf.
 
Mongo needs all his faculties when he’s hired to investigate a fellow professor who’s been experimenting with sensory deprivation. Soon after, a nun asks him to help clear a psychic of murder. And then, weirdest of all, his seven-year-old neighbor, Kathy, begs him to locate her father’s “Book of Shadows.”
 
When Mongo finds Kathy’s father dead from what seems to be a ritual sacrifice—and the little girl lying comatose nearby—the distressed detective follows a trail of occult clues and discovers that all three of his cases are tied to something wicked. Now, to save Kathy from an unnatural end, Mongo will risk it all to separate the facts from something even stranger than fiction.
 
An Affair of Sorcerers is the 3rd book in the Mongo Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
 
“Beautifully plotted and assured . . . The work of a master.” —#1 New York Times–bestselling author Peter Straub