He Drank, and Saw the Spider by Alex Bledsoe

I think this is the fourth of the Eddie LaCrosse novels I've read, and while they've never struck me as great literature, I've always been happy to read them. So when I found this one at a library sale last year, it made it directly into my ever-growing "buy" pile and came home with me. (I'm not trying to be snarky - some things are literature and deep and some things are not, and you need a little of both in your book diet, as far as I can figure.)

It felt, though, like this was more of a straightforward (if still tongue-in-cheek) sword and sorcery than the weird mashup of detective noir with sword and sorcery that I've been enjoying so much up to now. This didn't have quite the detective oomph, and I'm having trouble putting my finger on precisely why. Maybe just because it didn't start with a dame (or the memory of a dame) coming into Eddie's office with a story that embroils him in a mystery.

I'll leave it at that - there is less of the Eddie LaCrosse as noir detective going on here, and that was a bit disappointing. Not enough to make me not enjoy the book - I still did! - but that core conceit was a little weaker than some of the preceding books.

It was however, a twisty tale of suspicion, sudden death, and hidden heirs to kingdoms. It's a story that begins years earlier, when Eddie passes through a particular kingdom and finds a man dying from a bear attack (like you do), wrapped around a baby girl he protected at the cost of his own life. Eddie takes the child to a nearby village and finds a family to adopt her. Eighteen or twenty years later, he and his paramour Liz are passing back through the area.

Just in time to see the former baby, now a young lady, fall in love with someone that raises a lot of eyebrows on both sides, and...have people sent after her from a neighboring kingdom with instructions to take her back bodily to the sorceress who may or may not be controlling that neighboring kingdom. Of course, Eddie gets involved, as a retired sword jockey, and this book relies more on his weapons past than his investigative one. I also don't think he solves the mystery in this one, if I'm remembering correctly. It's unveiled by the perpetrator (for lack of a better word) to the group at large near the end.

A lot of this book is about the family the orphaned baby was adopted into, and that's all quite enjoyable and heartwarming, even if her brother is a bit of a dick and needs to be punched. He is, eventually, so all is good.

I didn't quite get what I expected from this book out of it, and so I was a bit disappointed - I've enjoyed the other three I've read more. But this wasn't bad. It was more straightforwardedly fantasy, but with some of the same modern sensibility, and Eddie and Liz continue to be enjoyable characters to follow as they stumble right into the middle of secrets that could change kingdoms.