Half-Resurrection Blues

Older’s debut novel, which launches the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, pits half-dead Carlos Delacruz, an agent for the New York Council for the Dead, against an ancient sorcerer. Carlos (familiar from stories in Older’s collection, Salsa Nocturna) is an inbetweener, “alive and dead at the same time,” with no memory of his past. He and other COD agents work to protect the mortal world and the land of the dead from each other. The task of removing some annoying imps gets complicated fast when Carlos learns that they herald the arrival of Sarco, a powerful spirit bent on destroying the barriers between the living and the Underworld. Carlos is a winning protagonist, with a murky past, troubled present, and smart, smart-ass narrative voice. Older’s magical New York City is fresh and richly envisioned, a gritty and genuine urban setting rife with strange forces and thoroughly enlivened by the fixers, dealers, and supernatural creatures who inhabit it. Fans of urban fantasy will greatly enjoy this entirely lively novel. Agent: Eddie Schneider, Jabberwocky Literary Agency. (Jan.)