Trick of the Light

Trick of the Light (2009) Rob Thurman (Trickster)

I had not read this book in years. It’s been on my list of books to purchase as ebooks (since I only had the paper book) but it never went on sale,so I finally broke down and bought it.

Then I worried it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered.

Silly me.

I love Rob Thurman’s writing and characters and stories.

Which put me in the mood for some old, cheesy eighties, heavy metal music, and I listened to that all the way up to the caver’s hovel. When I stopped the car in a cloud of dust, Leo yawned, lifted his hat, and grunted, “I feel very, very angry and in the need of hair spray and a pentacle-studded leather codpiece. Your doing?”

Trixa is searching for the demon who murdered her brother, and she’ll go to any lengths to discover it–including talking with the demons who live around Las Vegas.

“What do you do with the souls you bargain for?” I asked, changing the subject to something other than Zeke and Griffin. If I hadn’t, I’d have to shoot Solomon, although half the blame was mine, and that wasn’t the most delicate way of getting information out of someone. It tended to cut down on their cooperation fairly quickly.

“We eat them.”

But that doesn’t mean she is willing to enjoy herself a bit during her search.

“Please,” I said scornfully, “I’m hardly some leather-wearing monster killer with a cadre of hot men and demons waiting on my every sexual whim.” I paused, a glass held in midair. Leo started to speak and I held up a finger on my free hand. “Wait a minute. I’m still contemplating why I’m not that and wondering how to change it.”

She has a best friend, Leo, and the two of have taken in two lost boys who went on to become demon hunters for Eden house.

The problem is that one of those young men was very damaged as a child, and is only able to function because of the other.

“How many damn drugs did his bitch of a mother take while she was pregnant to make him this way?” he’d asked once over a drink after a particular mission had gone sideways because of Zeke and his inability to stop, once in motion, to exercise that will.

Although Trixa is the main character here, Zeke and Griffin are the heart of the story, the two characters who will do absolutely anything for each other, because for most of their lives they have had only each other.

But Trixa is the main character, and she is marvelous.

I laughed at myself— which is some of the very best laughter there is.

It’s difficult to talk about this story without giving everything away, but on re-read I was looking for all the clues to all the many surprises throughout the story, and that made the story even more delightful, since the clues were there to see, but you still never saw the ending coming.

This was just lovely to re-read.

Publisher: Ace
Rating: 9.5

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