House of Cards by C.E. Murphy

I reviewed the first book in this series, Heart of Stone a while back, and I said at the end that I wasn't all that motivated to rush right out and buy the rest of the series. I ran across the next two books at the library bookstore, though, and at $1.50 each, I just couldn't pass up adding them to the library. So, here's my thoughts on the second book.

Margrit "Grit" continues to get herself more deeply involved in the affairs of the Old Races, and actually accepts a job with the leader of the vampires, Eliseo Daisani, as his personal assistant, even though this move is strongly opposed by her family and friends. Her relationship with Alban Korund, the gargoyle, begins to get more serious, as well, though her human boyfriend, Tony, really wants to make things work out between them despite their stormy past.

The central story line here is about the Selkies. It was presumed by all of the rest of the races that the Selkies had died out centuries ago, when the last of their kind swam off into the ocean, never to be heard from again. It was a surprise to most of them when a Selkie and her infant daughter turned up in HoS, and they are truly shocked when a new leader of the Selkies, Kaimana Kaiiai, appears on the scene to reveal that the Selkies have merely been in hiding in the tropical isles, interbreeding with humans until their race once again has enough numbers to be a valid force.

He has come to petition the Quorum (council of the races) that the half-Selkies and above be considered as full members now. Margrit, as The Negotiator, is to have a place at the table when the races meet. There also appears to be some conflict between Janx, the Dragon Lord, and Daisani, who may be having one another's minions killed off one at a time. Margrit's former boss at Legal Aid becomes a casualty in the conflict. The next suspected target is Malik, a Djinn who has been one of Janx's lieutenants for a long time, and Alban is blackmailed into watching over him to keep him safe.

So, if you're already involved in the series, and really just have to know all of their secrets, this book will reveal some, and leave others hidden for the third book, I assume. The only other revelation in this book is the veil being removed (actually it's an evening gown) on the mechanics of making love to a flying gargoyle. Given that Margrit mentions at one point that his kisses taste of stone, one begins to wonder other things...well, "Grit" is her nickname, after all.

The Temple Dogs by Warren Murphy and Molly Cochran

Review written January, 2000

Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir used to write a series which I really enjoyed - The Destroyer Series. I collected them up till about #60 or so, but eventually lost interest when I began to focus on science fiction. The interplay between the two main characters was extremely witty and they had a lot of good martial arts action. I think they may still be writing them, but somewhere along the line Murphy teamed up with Cochran to write some other novels, among them a couple of good Arturian legend novels.
 
In Temple Dogs, Murphy & Cochran tell a pretty fair yarn about the conflict between a Yakuza family and a Mafia family. The plot revolves around the killing of a newlywed couple by the heir to a Mafia family, who is humiliated by being thrown out of the hotel where the wedding reception is being held. The bride's grandfather decides to avenge their murder, as the police cannot bring the murderer to justice, and is himself beaten to death by thugs. The brother of the bride, Miles Haverford, journeys to Japan to ask the help of the Yakuza chieftain, and old friend of his grandfather.
 
I won't get into all of the plot and events of the novel, but it did have a couple of flaws. First, Miles is a spoiled rich kid who, in the course of events, must prove himself to the members of the Yakuza before they will help him. He eventually does this through his superior character, and then is trained in the way of the Yakuza. This training goes by awfully quickly, and it's been my experience with the martial arts that proficiency is usually gained over the course of years, rather than weeks, so I was a little disappointed in the reality gap there.
 
Also, the heir apparent to the Yakuza, Sato, starts out very antagonistic (to say the least) to Miles, and about 2/3 of the way through the book undergoes an amazing change of heart, which carries the whole outcome of the novel. I just couldn't sustain my belief in the sudden turnabout. He was arrogant, cruel, and abusive, and suddenly becomes humble, kind and compassionate.
 
Despite all this, the novel was fairly entertaining, with some creative violence, good dialogue, and interesting plot twists.

Mailbox Monday

This week, I picked up the second and third books in C.E. Murphy's series that began with Heart of Stone.

Heart of Stone, by C.E. Murphy

Occasionally I experiment with picking up a new author's work at the bookstore, and that's what I did with C.E. Murphy's Heart of Stone. Murphy appears to have several series in progress, and this is the first one in The Negotiator. The premise of these books is that there are some of the Old Races living among us, and that we are for the most part unaware of their presence. Nothing new here, really, except that instead of the usual suspects Murphy has elected to use some supernatural beings that, for the most part, ordinarily aren't part of the "in" crowd of todays urban fantasies. The Old Races that are living in New York City in Heart of Stone are Gargoyles, Dragons, Djinns, Selkies and Vampires.


There's a nice nod here to traditional elements of magic in that the Gargoyles represent Earth, the Djinn Air, the Dragons Fire and the Selkies Water. At one point in the book the heroine, Margrit, asks what worldly element the Vampires display, and learns that they are "not of this world". No word yet on whether they're from another planet, an alternate universe, or some sort of spiritual realm.

Another thing that's interesting is that our heroine, Margrit - or "Grit", is of a despised race...Lawyers. To Murphy's credit, some obvious puns were avoided in the dialog. A character could have asked something like, "Is that True, Grit?" or, after she gets beaten up by a crazed female gargoyle, one of her visitors in the hospital could have exclaimed, "Grit, your teeth!" But I digress.

Grit likes to run in Central Park for exercise, and she has a bad habit of doing it after dark. One evening she is surprised by a gentleman who appears abruptly near her, and they have a brief but tense conversation. The next morning she sees on the news that a woman with a similar physical description to hers has been murdered in the park, and the suspect's description matches that of her mysterious acquaintance.

Grit has an on and off again romantic relationship with a detective on the New York police force, Tony, and she informs him that she may have met the murderer. Tony tries to investigate this new lead, but Grit seems determined to jump in the middle of things, and she's visited again by the suspect, Alban, who turns out to be a gargoyle, and who, of course, claims to be innocent. In what appears to be a separate plot, Grit takes the case of a homeless woman trying to fight City Hall. The building in which she and other squatters live is being torn down by its owner, and Grit tries to get an injunction against him.

Eventually, Grit gets to meet a representative or two of all of the Old Races, and she works hard to get to the bottom of the mystery and find the real killer. The pace of the novel varied too much from frantic to lackadaisical, and I didn't find myself, at the end, with an irresistible desire to grab the next book in the series to find out what happens next. This could have just been a "setup" novel, getting us ready to accept the premise of Grit as The Negotiator, a human lawyer who can act as an advocate between the Old Races, when the human legal system cannot.

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