I really like the the blend of mystery/noir and paranormal/occult in the Felix (Fix) Castor series. The mystery element is the real meat of the story, not just a sub-plot to carry the paranormal elements along. In some ways Felix reminds of my favorite P.I. Jack Taylor who is the lead in a series by Ken Bruen. Although his backstory is a lot less tragic than Jack's, Felix regularly gets his ass kicked and somehow manages to get himself strapped up with enough banadages, booze, prescription drugs...

Vicious Circle is the 2nd book in the Felix Castor fantasy / mystery series by author Mike Carey. Castor is an exorcist who works in a dystopic London. London is peopled with zombies, ghosts, weres, vampires, etc. so there is a bit of the Anita Blake feel to the story. There is even a political movement trying to give ghosts legal protection.Castor is helping the police investigate a murder, trying to contact the spirit of the victim. He is also hired by a couple to find the spirit of their daug...

3.5 stars.For real it took me a month to read this book? Well, it's mostly my fault. I've been slapped with a pretty severe reading slump, and that had nothing to do with this.That said, my rounded-down rating does reflect some on that situation. While this book didn't cause my reading slump, it didn't really help me pull out of it. The story was excellent, and on par with the first book in the series. I really enjoyed the plot and the characters, and everything tied together nicely.For me it wa...

Eh, you know, this is perfectly competent urban fantasy. Better than, in several respects. The writing, in particular, is several cuts above the pack. But it’s doing that thing where the lone hero wanders around London alternately getting beat up and snarking at people. Which is entertaining enough, but when it comes right down to it that’s all you’ve got because this guy is a lone hero, doncha know, so he has no real community or support system. And what he does have will be stripped away by th...

Mixed feelings about the book overall. Fix gets interested in a missing person case which opens up into a multi-pronged mystery. The mystery had a couple of twists which I enjoyed.I did think there was improvement on the pacing of the book, but there was a point mid-book where it bogged and I started to skim. My trouble with Fix's emotional state continues. He often realizes he could cooperate or play along, but obstinately decides not to--even when it's usually to his detriment. Often, he antag...

Okay I gave it 2 novels in the series. I have liked several urban fantasies, and fallen into this trap before. I wanted these to be books I'd like...but I don't. I hoped the second book would appeal to me more, it didn't.Mostly I find the books too negative (I'm not saying dark...a lot of urban fantasy can be called dark, without being negative.) I largely find "Fix" annoying and really don't care for him a great deal of the time. I get tired of his going on about what he doesn't know while reje...

Book two in the Felix Castor series - another 3.5 stars. These stories are a lot of fun! I'm noticing that each time I think the story is tying up, I look at Audible and see there are several hours left - Carey can weave a story and keep you guessing...for the most part. Some aspects of the story are predictable, while others creep up on you and surprise you. Plenty of ghosts and werewolves and various other undead, big helpings of mindless violence, and a few good doses of stark beauty. Bring o...

This wasn't as funny as the first book in the series (not that it was humorous, but he had a lot of dry humor in that one, and just not so much in this one). The mystery was good, it had a few twists that surprised me, and I like the world with its mix of ghosts, zombies, demons, and ordinary people.

The second instalment in this series really picks up the pace. It's a little bit of a 'kitchen sink' plot at first but when it comes together, it does so in a fascinating way. Felix has to make some very hard decisions - I'm curious to see how the repercussions play out.

More of Felix Castor's adventures with ghosts in London, and a good read. I liked the plot of this second book more than the first, and I like Castor and most of the characters. Barring the occasional overwrought simile and a couple of repeated phrases that should have been edited out, the writing is very smooth.The book does have some serious flaws. I figured out who the bad guy was almost immediately and had to endure Castor's seemingly foolish ignorance. The action scenes are highly implausib...

Kudos to Mike Carey for his cleverly-written and highly original urban noir novel Vicious Circle. Set in alternate London where the dead coexist with the living, exorcism is no longer the sole province of the Catholic church, and pesky ghosts (and the occasional demon) require the services of men like Felix "Fix" Castor--a likeable bloke who's slightly down-on-his luck after suffering a few professional and personal hits--to eradicate them. For those like me who missed the first Felix Castor nov...

Something very bad is happening in London, and the rising of the dead is only the start of it. The ghost of a child has been stolen from her parents' home. A man ridden by a demon has become even more disturbingly violent. A local church seems to have been invaded by a dark presence. Ordinary Londoners have suddenly succumbed to bouts of horrific violence.The end is nigh and the demons have come out to play.It isn't long before Felix Castor is right in the middle of the game.Carey's books make f...

I ended up enjoying this one more than I remembered :) This was my first time listening to the audio, and that I wasn't crazy about. The narrator's voice was way too cultured for such a disreputable character, and if memory serves, Felix is from Liverpool. If my memory of watching too many Beatles movies serves, this was most definitely not a Liverpudlian accent. I missed my Fix. He's a lot more shady.

This was interesting. There's some potentially interesting plots starting but still, sometimes this is too close to Dresden Files for my liking. What I didn't like at all was the way Basquiat was written. Why on Earth fantasy authors need to present female police characters in this way? Those women have to be twice as harsh, twice as stupid and twice as blind than his male fellows... Why?? We could have finish this in a less painful and faster way if she had used her brain instead of exhuding te...

Carey's writing has improved from the debut of this series--the stodgy pacing of some of those chapters has given way to tightly written, exciting adventure throughout this one--but my tentative four stars for the debut drop back to three stars here because the Goodreads rating system is supposed to indicate how well you liked a book and I was very disturbed by a central element of this mystery. You might or might not be--I know it's a personal thing. And since the hard part for me doesn't begin...

This was good. 3 1/2 but I won't bump it up because there were just too many histories and descriptive sides that took me out of the story and I had to think, 'what does this have to do with the whole'. In the first book, I let this go and thought of it a world building but he seemed to have more of it in this second book. More drift points, where you want to put down the book as the plot line has gone off on a tangent and you just don't want to have to wade through the history again, or laws of...

A ghostly whodunit turned into a "Hey, didn't you do it?"Some of the storylines were slightly meandering until we got into the meat, but they served to remind us and explore a bit of what makes Fix a tortured soul. Of course, this is pretty standard fare when it comes to the Noir genre, and it hardly makes a difference whether the main character wields a gun and a whistle to work his magic, (both figuratively and literally.)While it doesn't really stand out too far ahead in the UF field, it is a...

I found this paranormal noir to be thoroughly engrossing and creepy. It was dark and I can’t see how Pen will ever forgive him for what he’s done. Carey manages to make exorcism quite fascinating, although I’m also sure it really isn’t !

I'm tired of trying to draw hard lines around what is considered hardboiled or noir fiction and what isn't. But this isn't it. At all.This book, although comparable to Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden, is like the Miss Marples of urban fantasy. (Note: Harry Dresden is also not noir fiction with magic, but is a pulp book more likened to softboiled pulp like Ed McBain). Mike Carey is the Agatha Christie of urban fantasy. Carey used to write for Vertigo comics on the series Hellblazer, and was, in my op...

Better than the first book with more action, more characters, and a more intense plot. This time the protagonist isn't quite as alone, he has a couple of friends but he still needs more. He needs someone giving him encouragement when he's feeling guilty about his friend. (Which I don't even get--he tried to save him and the friend was just a narcissistic asshole who thought the normal rules didn't apply to him.) I was never really enamored of his friend/landlady and now I don't like her at all.