Pinnacle City

In this skillfully constructed secondary-world noir novel, having superpowers isn’t always so super, and everyone has something to hide. Eddie Enriquez is a former supervillain’s henchman turned upstanding PI with the power to see an item’s past. Kimberly Kline is Pinnacle City’s next big superhero, taking on the mantle of Solar Flare from her uncle. Kimberly and Eddie dig into the underbelly of the city together after a social justice activist lawyer is murdered by the genetically modified people he worked to protect. The conspiracy they uncover threatens to destroy the entire superhero/supervillain system. The dual-perspective narrative keeps the reader in suspense while exploring the two very different worlds that Eddie and Kimberly inhabit within the same city. Though the focus is on the enormity of the protagonists’ task, the authors go out of their way to make readers care about Pinnacle City’s ordinary residents as well. By allowing everyone to be a little morally grey, Carter and Titchenell spin a superhero story with staying power. (Aug.)