I’ve really enjoyed the Tinfoil Dossier series and this one was especially strong. It was good to see the return of the Signalman and as always the author’s prose is rich and rare but still engrossing. Highly recommend.

This is the most conventional book in the Tinfoil Dossier series (I do love that series name). It's fairly linear and you're usually pretty sure which character's POV you're in. The basic frame is the old "washed up pro has to come back for one more mission". In this case the old pro is Ellison Nicodemo and they are being asked by the Signalman to confront the magnificently named Jehosheba (seriously, this may be my favorite name ever) Talog, who is an old nemesis of Nicodemo's.

Jehosheba is a wonderful Bondesque villain and she's got a backstory that features the Lovecraftian Deep Ones. I'm not quite sure why she's returned for Nicodemo, but she has, and Jehosheba's first move leads to a wonderfully horrible and tragic set piece.

Nicodemo, on the other hand, just wants to fade away. They were SEWN INTO A SHARK ALL ALONG THE OUTER SILHOUETTE OF THEIR BODY and have scars like zippers all up and down their outer arms, legs, etc. You can imagine that this would change a person.

Nicodemo is the one for this desperate mission because they hold the Tindalos Asset. You can look the visual for that up online if you want- I had to because I couldn't picture it.

This book feels like a bit of a callback to The Drowning Girl. There are similar themes of a slimy, pelagic yet somehow sexy siren, even a bit of werewolf. I'm not sure I loved the end of the Signalman's story here, but who knows? There might be more.

From a set of mini-reviews in our speculative fiction newsletter from Hungary:

A nyár másik slágere Caitlín R. Kiernan Tinfoil Dossier-trilógiája volt. A kisregénytrilógia egyfajta furcsa, paranoiás és remekül megírt elegye az X-Aktáknak, Lovecraft-i dolgoknak, sci-finek, fantasynek, horrornak, weirdnek. Az októberben érkező harmadik kötetet (The Tindalos Asset) előre megkaptam a kiadótól, de a végére érve sem tudnám megmondani, miről szólt. Viszont azt nagyon jól csinálta.
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My other favourite summer read was the Tinfoil Dossier-trilogy by Caitlín R. Kiernan. This trilogy of novellas is a weird, paranoid and pretty well written mixture of X-Files vibes, the Lovecraftian myth, sci-fi, fantasy, horror and weird fiction. I cannot really summarize what is it about, even as I finished reading the third one, The Tindalos Asset, out in October. But it was a great read.