Hell Of A Deal by Mark Huntley-James

4.75 AVERAGE

candlestick's review

4.75
adventurous dark funny fast-paced
 
This is dark, fast paced and a little bonkers – and funny in a sometimes wince-making way. Definitely some swearing, violence and horror elements plus some nudity. There are demons, ghosts, witches, a passionate, dedicated, grim, extreme exorcist who hates all who traffic with demons especially witches and demon traders, plus some really awful humans who just had no excuse at all for showing demons how to be inventively nasty. 
Paul Moore, the central character, starts out just a bit pleased with himself. He has a good living with his occult shop and his fancy business brokering short term, safe deals with demons. He has his own ethics and makes sure he provides a good service and gives the customer what they really want with no side effects, but he is not living on a moral high ground. 
Then new forces in town try to take out the demon traders in one clever move. Some survive, some don't. Paul sets about investigating who it is and why they are doing this. Along the way he works out that he isn't quite as detached as he thought, and there are some people he cares about and will rescue and he doesn't want his home town trashed either. 
There are mad chase scenes, some really inventive magic, fun and varied secondary characters and the sort of nastiness that gets under your skin. All this is set in an English market town, called Barrowhurst, with far more than its fair share of occult events. 

I think this series would appeal to people who like Mary Gentle's Grunts, Jim Butcher's noir Dresden Files – though it is not a classic PI story, perhaps Simon R Green's Nightside and Mike Carey's Felix Castor books and there is an element of Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat in the inventiveness of the main character for getting himself out of trouble (and into more trouble) and the madly dangerous witch Paul Moore really fancies has a bit in common with Angelina in The Stainless Steel Rat for being a committed psychopath and also strangely appealing. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings