The Sword-Edged Blonde
Alex Bledsoe, . . Night Shade, $24.95 (232pp) ISBN 978-1-59780-112-6
Equal parts sword-and-sorcery action/adventure and noir whodunit, Bledsoe's finely polished debut is evocative of fantasy legend Fritz Leiber's classic tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Bledsoe's narrative, while set in a comparable world, features only one protagonist: “sword jockey” Eddie LaCrosse, a private investigator who has spent most of his life trying to distance himself from a shadowy and tragic past. When his old childhood friend, King Philip of Arentia, enlists his help to unravel a scandalous mystery surrounding the brutal death of the young royal heir—a murder in which the king's beautiful wife, Rhiannon, is the prime suspect—LaCrosse accepts only to encounter a deity who forces him to come to grips with the horrific events of his youth. Incorporating elements from both hard-boiled mystery and heroic fantasy, Bledsoe's genre-blending first novel is both stylish and self-assured: Raymond Chandler meets Raymond E. Feist.
Reviewed on: 09/24/2007
Genre: Fiction
Analog Audio Cassette - 978-1-4332-3221-3
Compact Disc - 978-1-4332-3222-0
Compact Disc - 978-1-4332-3224-4
MP3 CD - 978-1-4332-3225-1
Mass Market Paperbound - 309 pages - 978-0-7653-6203-2
Other - 320 pages - 978-1-4299-2528-0
Other - 1 pages - 978-1-4332-3227-5
Paperback - 304 pages - 978-0-7653-8048-7
Pre-Recorded Audio Player - 978-1-4332-7008-6
