Snake Agent

Snake Agent (2005) Liz Williams (Detective Inspector Chen #1)

It’s been more than half a decade since I last read this series, and I’d forgotten how much SF and horror it has. Probably because both are far less important than the fantasy and mystery, and neither the SF or the horror is written in a way that particularly bothers me, even though some of it could be read as dystopian.

Detective Inspector Chen is the officer who takes all the mystical investigations in Singapore Three; his relationship with the goddess Kuan Yin has allowed him to go back and forth to Hell if it is needed to solve a crime.

But he’s not so sure of how things stand with his goddess right now, and the case he is dealing with is far bigger than anyone thinks.

“You see, it appears that the young lady in question did not in fact reach the Celestial Shores. A ghost-photograph of her has been taken, revealing her current whereabouts to be somewhere in the port area of Hell.”

Ling’s mouth sagged open in shock. “In Hell? But the payments were made, the sacrifices impeccably ordered … I don’t understand.”

“Neither does her mother.”

As always my favorite characters are the teakettle and Zhu Irzh.

He’d suffered from this on and off since childhood, like the prick of a pin inside his mind, and had even gone so far as to visit a remedy maker. What had the old man called it? Conscience.

With difficulty, Zhu Irzh found his voice, “Ma’am?”

“I caught,” the goddess said icily, “a thought of murder.”

Zhu Irzh hastened to reassure her. “A hypothesis briefly entertained, nothing more.”

The trouble with hell, Zhu Irzh reflected bitterly, was not so much the palpable miasma of evil (with which he was, after all, ingrained) but the bureaucracy.

Characters: Detective Inspector Chen Wei, Inari, Teakettle/Badger, Sergeant Tzu Ma, Lao Li, Dr Nguyen, Citizen No Ro Shi, Seneschal Zhu Irzh, Former Bloodmaster Tso, First Lord of Banking, Dao Yi, Su Lo Ling, Mrs Tang, Pearl Tang, H’suen Tang, Xi Fu, Kuan Yin, Fan?

Cover by Jon Foster

Publisher: Night Shade

Rating: 9/10

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