The search for a missing girl leads a magical thief to a mysterious doomsday cult and the secret of his wife's death in Catchpenny, an intricate, gritty urban fantasy by Charlie Huston (The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, The Shotgun Rule).
Sidney Catchpenny is a sly, a thief with the ability to travel through mirrors. He steals curiosities imbued with mojo, fuel for magic, but his reputation and talent have declined due to his increasingly persistent depression. An old friend comes to him for help investigating a teenager whose mother insists she's more than missing, she's "gone." The surprising mojo in the girl's room is strong enough to give Catchpenny a "sudden rush of positivity"--and it proves the girl has magical connections beyond what he'd been told. As more of his old acquaintances reenter his life and seem to have a stake in finding the girl, Catchpenny must untangle what a massive multiplayer online game, suicide cults, and a killer with his own face all have to do with the missing girl.
Catchpenny comes to grips with his wife's death as he traverses a shadowy, magical Los Angeles underworld full of rival power players. Huston enmeshes readers so deeply into Catchpenny's perspective that his flaws are only gradually revealed through multiple confrontations with people from his past. Huston likewise slowly metes out details about magic, giving readers what they need to know but never overwhelming the novel's intrigue or the atmosphere. Fans of Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series should check this one out. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library