Hex-Rated
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A salacious throwback to the detective pulps of the 70s, Hex-Rated kicks off the new urban fantasy series the Brimstone Files.
Fall, 1970. Los Angeles has always been a den of danger and bliss, but even darker tidings brew in the City of Angels. Cults, magic, and the supernatural are leaking into the worlds of glamour and dives of the gutter. To the spectators walking down Hollywood Blvd, it’s just more proof that La La Land is over the cuckoo’s nest. But to former child magician and Korean veteran turned newly-licensed private investigator James Brimstone, it means business is picking up.
After attending his mentor’s funeral, Brimstone signs his first client: Nico, a beautiful actress with a face full of scars and an unbelievable story of sex, demons, and violence on the set of a pornographic film in the San Fernando Valley. The cops chalk it up to a bad trip from a lost soul, but Brimstone knows better.
He takes the case, but the investigation goes haywire as he encounters Hell’s Angels, a lost book of Japanese erotica, and a new enemy whose powers may fill the streets of L.A. with blood. He’ll have to us his Carney wits, magic tricks, and a whole lotta charm to make it out of a world that is becoming . . . Hex-Rated.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Steeped in the style of 1970s pulp detective fiction, this first book in a projected urban fantasy series capitalizes on some of the genre's cheesier and sleazier aspects. Its gumshoe, former magician James Brimstone, has just hung out his shingle as a private dick. His first client, an actress with a scarred face, claims she was mauled by a snake that struck from the mouth of her costar on the set of a pornographic film. Brimstone smells sorcery, and before he can solve the mystery of why mages would be seeking purchase in the smut industry, he has to navigate encounters with the Hell's Angels, Nazi cultists, and other personnel from the dark underbelly of Los Angeles. Brimstone is cut from the cloth of the classic wisecracking detective, and Ridler (Rise of the Luchador) peppers the text with perfectly pitched hard-boiled vernacular ("She'd fallen out of the pretty tree and hit every branch on the way down"). The novel's wild mix of comedy and supernatural perils bodes well for its detective's future adventures.
