The story begins the way all the best hard-boiled, noir stories begin, with a private detective in his down-at-heel and behind-on-rent office in the less salubrious part of town waiting for either the phone to ring, for someone to knock at the door, or for his willpower to resist the bottle in his desk drawer to run dry. Only one of those three is ever a frequent occurrence.

The knock on the door is followed by the entrance of a mysterious woman with a sob story, a need for his professional services and a whole lot of secrets she’s not planning to share unless she has to. He knows she’s likely to be more trouble than she’s worth – in more ways than one – but he can’t resist her siren song OR the temptation of the mystery she represents.


The ‘real’ Angels Flight, Los Angeles, CA 1955
It’s an opening straight out of Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep) or Easy Rawlins (Devil in a Blue Dress), but this isn’t exactly our Los Angeles. Welcome to the City of Shadows, where the government is corrupt, the police are on the take, zombies clean the streets, vampires have their own neighborhood in the midst of the city districts filled with other so-called marginal populations and there’s a new drug on the streets that can even get the undead higher than the literal Angel’s Flight over Bunker Hill.

A real angel, an angel who has been ferrying passengers up that hill on his own wings since LONG before the Spanish missionaries were brought to meet him.

Private investigator Jack Mitchell might finally become solvent if the three cases that arrive at his door all get solved and all pay their bills – as rare as that combination has been in Jack’s experience. Lamont Small’s wife is having an affair. Clarice Jethroe’s husband is missing. So is Dora Urban’s half-brother.

Initially, the only thing the three cases have in common is that law enforcement isn’t going to help and any other PI is going to show these potential clients the door without listening to them. Lamont Smalls and Clarice Jethroe – and their respective spouses – are black. Dora Urban is a vampire, and so is her half brother.

Jack Mitchell, mixed-race enough to ‘pass’ in either direction, and all too aware of who ‘sees’ him, who doesn’t and what it means to walk that narrow line, is their only hope.

If one of the three cases doesn’t get him killed before, or after, they intersect. Unless Dora bleeds him dry first.

Escape Rating A+: I wasn’t expecting this at all. I wasn’t expecting Twice as Dead to be SO DAMN GOOD. I really wasn’t expecting a story that reads like the very best ‘Old Skool’ urban fantasy with a protagonist who could have hung out with Philip Marlowe, Easy Rawlins or Dan Shamble (Death Warmed Over) with ease even though Mitchell would be wondering the whole time whether Marlowe and Rawlins would see him for who he was (Rawlins almost certainly yes, Marlowe maybe not) while zombie PI Shamble would have creeped Mitchell out down to the bone.

I expected to like this. I like urban fantasy very much, and you just don’t see a lot of it these days, especially urban fantasy that doesn’t fall over the line into paranormal romance. Which this doesn’t, if only because Dora Urban doesn’t believe that vampires are capable of the feeling.

In fact, the one and only complaint I have with this book is the cover. It’s really cheesy, and Dora Urban wouldn’t be caught dead – pardon me, as a vampire she would say finished – in that get up. She’s way classier than that. And this book deserves something better.

What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with this story from beginning to end, setting, characters, mystery, alternate history, and absolutely ALL, even more than Mitchell thinks he’s fallen for Dora.

Then again, he’s quite possibly going to discover that he’s been a complete fool in a later book in this series – while I’m certainly NOT. This was GOOD. Downright EXCELLENT. If the subsequent books live up to this series opener I’m going to be one very happy reader.

(In case you can’t tell, I’m having a difficult time getting to the meat of this thing because I had such a good time with it. Everything keeps turning to ‘SQUEE!’)

I’m not sure whether what first dragged me so deeply into this story was the characters or the setting. Actually I do know the first thing. Mitchell talks to his cat, Old Man Mose – and Mose talks back. I got teased by the question of whether Mose was really talking or whether Mitchell was putting words in his mouth – as people who are owned by cats often do.

Because that question led immediately to two others – just how magical is this alternate post-WW2 Los Angeles, followed by the question about how big those alternatives are and in exactly what ways.

And then there’s Mitchell himself, who is so very much in the Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe/Easy Rawlins hard-boiled detective mode, but with the nod to Marlowe and Rawlins because they both operated in our LA during the same time period that Mitchell does in his.

The cases Mitchell is confronted with combine the classics – a missing husband, a cheating wife, a missing brother who was clearly mixed up in something illegal and might have deserved whatever happened to him – which his sister doesn’t want to reveal because she knows damn well that he probably had it coming.

Then it spirals out into the differences. Two of his clients are black, and both his clients and himself acknowledge that the color of their skin means that they can only get help from one of their own, and that reaching out to the cops will only bring more trouble. While vampire Dora knows the cops don’t want to deal with her kind any more than she wants to deal with theirs – and that whatever her brother was in up to his neck was both ill-advised and illegal. Of course, trouble finds all of them anyway or this story wouldn’t exist.


Downtown Los Angeles ca 1950
What captivated me was the careful way in which this both was and was not Los Angeles as our own history knew it. At first, the reader believes they can place this story in time as well as location. It’s five years after the war in which Mitchell served. And that war was analogous to World War II, but it wasn’t exactly the same and is never called that, and neither were the opposing forces ever referred to as Nazis, but rather a name that translates to swastika. And they had sorcerers on their side. But then, so did the Allies.

There are other references that let the reader feel comfortable that this is post-World War II, but jazz musicians ‘Bird’ and ‘Lady Day’ are never referred to by their full names as we know them. So they might be, they might not exactly be, and we might or might not be further down the other leg of the trousers of time than we thought.

(I expected this part of the story to be marvelous because alternate history is what this author is award-winningly famous for. I just wasn’t expecting to see this depth of craft in a story that many will assume is ‘light’ entertainment. And I should have. If you are interested in alternate history and haven’t read Harry Turtledove, go forth and begin immediately because he’s awesome at it whether you agree with the choices he makes or not.)

I just settled in for the marvelous ride as Mitchell starts out with those seemingly common cases that in the best hard-boiled mystery fashion slowly congealed into a single case. An investigation that zigzagged from robbery to illicit drugs to dangerous magical experiments and landed in the machinations of an evil corporation secretly controlled by ancient gods who resorted to the most arcane method possible to silence any inconvenient enemies.

Considering how much trouble Mitchell is making for them, it’s a fate that he fears for himself and all his friends and associates – including the cat! – unless he can put together the right crew to fight back, not with knives and bullets – but on the magical plane.

Twice as Dead is the first book in the City of Shadows series, so clearly someone gets out of this story alive. Or at least, not dead. Or in the same state they went into it, if not a bit better. But the ending is just as clearly the start of something that goes with no good deed being unpunished, and this reader absolutely cannot wait to find out what that punishment is going to be.

Thank you Arc Manor | CAEZIK SF & Fantasy for this arc.

I came for the snarky cat but the plot sounded intriguing. It certainly has a lot going for it but sadly by the end of the book it felt like a car whose engine had started off with a roar but was ending with a rattle and wheeze.

Much of the book is the setting and the characters. The noir begins in a snappy manner but pretty soon it’s being laid on with a trowel. Of course Jack cracks sarcastic jokes but after a while those didn’t land as well or even make me smile. There is also a tendency for things to be repeated such as Jack's worry about an angel "elevator" and a description about a zombie shows up again almost verbatim and then is paraphrased in case the reader has forgotten.

The blurb hints that all of Jack’s investigations will come together in a final grand climactic battle at a tire factory. Well, not really. One case never ties in with the other two – or at least I don’t recall that it does. There is a showdown but much of what went into Jack going to this place and poking around is never really explained. Why was this happening, what did the dark powers involved in it do, and why was a missing person kidnapped? Given the small scope of what was happening, how was it worth it to anyone? The payoff didn’t match the build-up.

An illegal substance that goes back to vague rumors Jack had heard during the war also comes into play. Apparently the (corrupt) cops have put some kind of spell on the word so that anyone who utters it gets overheard and “investigated” (and we know how dirty LA cops “investigate” things). So who is making/using it and why? Well that kind of sputters out, too. So … another let-down. And the case against the corrupt cops? That goes about the same way almost every other aspect of this book does.

Now having written this far, I’ve realized that this is one of those books with more vibe than a plot that winds up making sense. Most of the endings are sort of anti-climactic and in some cases the impetus that’s driving it all isn’t really explained. Jacks’ increasingly awkward delivery of increasingly bad jokes just becomes cringe and, I’m going to ask it again – why were the “beings” at the tire plant at all? My grade has dropped over the course of writing this review so even if this is the start of a series, I won’t be continuing. C- and a lot of that grade is for the cat who I wanted more of.

A dame walks into a P.I.’s office looking for help with a missing person case. Only this dame is a vampire. A well written urban fantasy noir mystery reminiscent of the books from the 30s and 40s but set in an alternate version of LA populated by various paranormal beings.

If you like the Harry Dresden or Tales From the Nightside books you’ll probably enjoy this. One word of caution though, due to the period the book is set in some of the racial terms used may be offensive to some readers.

"Rudolf Sebestyen is missing, and Marianne Smalls is involved in an illicit affair with the shady Jonas Schmitt. Both cases converge when Dora Urban, Rudolf's beautiful and mysterious half-sister, and Lamont Smalls, Marianne's suspicious husband, hire Jack Mitchell, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking private investigator. Dora wants Jack to uncover what happened to her brother, while Lamont seeks proof of his wife's infidelity.

But Dora is a vampire, in a city teeming with creatures of the night.

As Jack dives deeper, he discovers that both cases are linked to vepratoga - a dangerous new drug spreading through Los Angeles. Twice as Dead is brimming with vampires, wizards, zombies and zombie dealers, the Central Avenue jazz scene, an exclusive after-hours club, adultery, a New England ghost who prefers Southern California's warmer clime, corrupt cops and politicians, spying rats, and a smart-mouthed talking cat.

When Jack's home is burned to the ground, the strands of his investigations culminate in a showdown at a tire factory, where even the reliefs on the walls are not what they seem. In this unique noirish urban fantasy set in postwar Los Angeles, Jack finds more adventure, danger, and romance than he ever imagined - and learns that success may come at too high a price."

I've always had Harry Turtledove on my radar, but since I started following first on Twitter and now on Bluesky I'm a huge fan!

TWICE AS DEAD combines urban fantasy with noir detective stories. Jack Mitchell is a hard-drinking, chain-smoking war veteran who is Black but light enough to look ethically ambiguous. He's living in LA after what would be the equivalent of World War II. In his world the enemy was the fylfot. Different name but same prejudice against Jews.

The first clue that this is an urban fantasy series is that Jack has a cat who talks but is otherwise as self-centered as any other cat. The second clue is that one of the clients who walks in the door is Dora Urban who happens to be a vampire.

Dora wants Jack to find her half-brother Rudolf Sebestyen. As Jack investigates, her find that Rudolf was not an upstanding vampire. He's planned a hit on the local blood bank and he's involved somehow with a new drug that is exciting all kinds of interest in shady circles.

But finding Rudolf is not Jack's only case. Celeste Jethroe has come to hire Jack to find out what happened to her missing husband Frank. He worked at U.S. Rubber and disappeared one day after work and after an argument with his supervisor.

Jack's third case has to do with proving that the wife of a local newspaper editor is having an affair.

The whole story was filled with questions to be answered and narrated by the very cynical Jack. The worldbuilding with includes vampires, wizards and zombies juxtaposes with the corrupt cops and built-in prejudices of the time period.

It was an engaging story with interesting characters.

Looking for your next noir urban fantasy fix? Pick up Twice as Dead and follow Jack Mitchell as the chain-smoking private eye works out what is going on in the City of Angels that contains vampires, zombies, wizards and jazz. Dora Urban, a Hungarian vampire immigrant hires Jack to find out what has happened to Rudolf Sebestyen, her half brother, who has disappeared. Lamont Smalls is looking for dirt on his wife who he thinks is cheating on him. While working these cases, Jack also gets involved in a missing husband case. Then there are the jazz clubs that Jack and Dora visit which help set the atmosphere for the book.Without giving too much away, Jack, his talking cat, Dora, and other folks that become part of the case manage to do some good despite the push-back from the Establishment. A very satisfying noir mystery.

Thanks Netgalley and Arc Manor/CAEZIK SF & Fantasy for the chance to read this title!

I had to sit for a day before writing this review because this book was so good! It was a bit like a mix between The Dresden Files and The Nightside Series if they were set in the forties. There was so much going on in the absolute best way. I’ve been jonesing for a new series like this, and I was not disappointed. (And yes, it was a great example of social commentary, but that’s not why I liked it.) This was pure urban fantasy at its finest. Have I said enough good things about it? I don’t think so. The characterization was on point, the pacing and tone were incredible, and let’s not forget the cat. I think he is the model for all modern cats in the world. The MC’s snark was perfection. I laughed my way through it, even as people kept disappearing and dying. I genuinely can’t wait to read more of this series. If you are a fan of Butcher and Green, you will love this story!

Huge thanks to Arc Manor | CAEZIK SF & Fantasy and NetGalley for sending me this ARC for review! All of my reviews are given honestly!

Twice as Dead was a fun tip of the hat to classic detective authors Chandler and Hammett, while also bringing in supernatural characters. Great fun and a quick read, while also calling out the racism and homophobia of the late 1940s/early 1950s. Recommended.

Harry Turtledove is one of my favorite authors, albeit I didn't read his entire bibliography. I got know his writing with The Lost Legion and I've read those books probably ten or more times and when one set started to fall apart, I bought a new one. After first four Videssos books I found Gerin the Fox novels and loved them a lot. I've read them probably two or three times. And after those I totally fell in love with The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump. I've read that books twice, about quarter of a century ago, when I was all about urban fantasy and huge fan of Laurel Hamilton and her Anita Blake series. Back then, about the same time, I read Otherwise (or Otherworld) books by Poul Anderson and over the decades The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump and Operation Chaos and Luna by Poul Anderson got mixed up in my head and I've started seeing them as set in the same world, authored by Harry Turtledove. All of this is to say that when I started reading Twice as Dead, I had a feeling like I was falling in some quite familiar and well known world, almost like I was reading a sequel of those novels.

I'm not well versed in American history, but I would hazard a guess that the novel is set in late '40s or early '50s of the 20th century, and at some points I had some difficulty to follow certain references, so I had to search them on the internet, but that was very rewarding in it self. In fact, while I'm writing this I'm listening to the music that features in the book somewhat heavily.

Twice as Dead is basically an LA noir crime novel, but with huge amount of social commentary, not so much concerning social class and standing, although there's a lot of that, but mostly about race and religion in America, segregation and racism, as well as immigrants, antisemitism and a lot about the danger of fascism and white supremacy. I can't imagine what made Turtledove write a book like that. :) I must say that at certain times some of that social commentary came a bit heavy-handed but then again, I'm a middle aged East European Socialist that belongs to ethnic majority in my country (sort of), not a minority in America, so what do I know.

All that aside, if we read this novel strictly as urban fantasy yarn, I had an immense amount of fun. Turtledove is a master of written word, leagues beyond average writer in the field of urban fantasy and I would love nothing more than to see Twice as Dead become a successful series of novel in the manner of Dresden Files, let us say. Turtledove's writing and world building is fascinating and complex and his firm grasp of history allows him to engage the reader and lure them into full immersion into America that is lost in time and now belongs solely to old movies and books with yellowed pages.

I want to read more of this while I'm listening to Charlie Parker and Bille Holiday. Oh, and I got to buy myself a bottle of Wild Turkey as soon as possible.

5*

One of my all-time favorite urban fantasies is The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, also by Turtledove, so I was thrilled when I saw this was coming out! In this, we have a hard-boiled detective (similar to Sam Spade) except the blonde who walks in is a vampire. The plot was not nearly as tightly woven as The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, but I found myself enjoying it quite a lot nonetheless. A somewhat leisurely, but fun read.

(A note: Since Turtledove is essentially recreating the a Dashiell Hammett-esque 1930s world, he uses the polite language of the 1930s to describe different races, some of which are quite impolite today. Once I got used to it, it was ok, but there was a lot of wincing in the first chapters.)

This is the start of a new series from Harry Turtledove. It’s an interesting departure from the alternate history he’s written a lot of, and although it starts a series it works well as a stand alone. I found it entertaining and absorbing.

Jack Mitchell is a private detective in a Los Angeles that doesn’t look very much like the one we know. World War II was fought with different people for different reasons, magic is real, and creatures like zombies and vampires inhabit the city along with the living population.

Like most detectives, he’s juggling multiple jobs. The vampire Rudolf Sebestyen is missing, and his half-sister – who’s also a vampire – wants to find him. Clarice Jethroe’s husband Frank has gone missing too. She’s sure it wasn’t voluntary, and she wants him found. Meanwhile, Marianne Smalls’ husband is sure she’s having an affair, and he wants proof to reduce his divorce settlement.

The three cases cross and at times converge, providing Jack with an even bigger puzzle than he thought.

This has the flavour of a 1950s or 1960s detective novel. Turtledove is quite deliberately evoking the period and style, and it works very well. It’s a little slow to get started, perhaps because Turtledove has to get a bit of world building in there too. Still, it doesn’t take long to ramp up, and I was never bored.

The world building is excellent, using touchstones from real history, and some accepted ideas from the fantasy genre, to anchor an original vision of the world as it might be. It was vivid and believable, and made the mystery story seem plausible.

The novel resolves the three cases Jack investigates, but there are some aspects of the world which clearly leave an opening for future novels. Readers are likely to be satisfied with this one – it does very much feel like it has an ending – while still being interested enough to look out for the next in the series.

The characters were vivid too, and although I’m not sure readers will exactly empathise, you’ll certainly understand what they’re feeling and doing and why. Some characters weren’t fully rounded – like Jack’s love interest, Dora Urban. However, this was generally a deliberate reflection of their behaviour, and added to the atmosphere of the novel.

I enjoyed this a great deal. It kind of mashes urban fantasy, alternate history, familiar fantasy tropes, and hard boiled detective fiction all in together to produce an original and interesting world. Add a solid plot and strong characters, and I think most readers will get the same pleasure from it.

I loved this book. The story is well-told and well-paced; it was difficult to put the book down. The characters and world-building are excellent and there are many passages so well-written that I would read them over several times. I found the noir attitude compelling but I did have to look up some words. Overall this is a great read and I look forward to more books in the series. Thank you to Netgalley and CAEZIK SF & Fantasy for the advance reader copy.

This was a fantastic job in the genre and had that feel that I was looking for, it was a strong opening chapter in the City of Shadows series. The characters were everything that was needed in this universe and worked with the plot of the book. I was invested in what was happening and am excited for more. Harry Turtledove wrote this perfectly and everything worked overall.

Got lost a few times reading the book, however I give it 5 stars it was very good. The getting lost part may have been my own fault. Will definitely be looking at more books from Mr. Turltedove.

As much as I’m having a hard time believing this, I’ve never read a book by this author until now. I think it’s because, after reading this, his books are on the cusp of what I like. For instance, I requested this book even though I’m not fond of books that take place in the past. Anyway, I did read this latest, and I’m glad I did. The author’s writing, buildup, and plotting is great, even though there were a couple things that weren’t a personal preference, not a problem with the book. His way of immersing the reader in the timeframe is exceptional without losing sight of the characters and what’s happening. Fans of his are sure to be happy with this series starter, and I will probably read the next one. Recommend. I was provided a complimentary copy which I voluntarily reviewed.

Wow, 75 and still going strong as the dean of alternate-historical fantasy.
The opening shows us how desperate a gumshoe Jack is, with the notion of undead infestation in LA casually dropped on the way to open the door for a beautiful dame. Lots of specific details tell us the rules of magic in this world and that she’s a vampire before he figures it out. He interviews to low-lifes, cats, and ghosts. A lot of poking around finds that his case (one of three) is linked to a drug developed by the Nazis that even they wouldn’t use. The tone has echoes of Lovecraft Country or LA Confidential with supernaturals. Though the plot progresses slowly at first, the ending had several Call of Cthulhu adventure-style boss battles and revelations.

My only negative comment is the narrator digresses too much about writing, which feels out of character.