About a year ago I was strolling through the public library. There's this display wall near the sci-fi section where they will feature either a specific genre or a specific sci-fi author's works for usually something like a full month. They will arrange the books on the shelves with the front covers facing out. The dsplay wall is perfectly accessible to the public and so you can freely yank down a book and thumb through it and even take it out if you like (leaving an obvious "hole" in the display, but the library doesn't care, since the whole point is promoting certain books from time to time).
Anyway, I yanked a book down and thumbed through it. And now I can't recall the name of it. I do recall that there were easilly 5 or more books by that same author centered upon this exact same main character (a character I will describe below).
The story was narrated from First peson POV by the female MC who I'm pretty sure held a job as a very jaded private detective (or possible a very jaded paralegal) working very low on the totem pole for an extra crummy detective agency (or possibly an extra crummy law firm) and she thoroughly hated her job. The style of the book was that mildly shocking kind of dead-pan humor of the dark neo-noir flavor where the hysterically biting one-liners just kept on coming. As she narrated, I kept imagining her voice as a flat monotone right out of a Humphrey Bogart gangster film. It took place in a fictional city with an alternate reality setting whereby vampires and werewolves not only existed but were common knowledge to everyone in society.
The one book I thumbed through took place at Christmas time. Chapte One opened with her sitting at her crummy desk at her crummy job at that crummy detective agency (or maybe law firm), while self-consciously wearing slightly silly Christmas-y novelty clothing of the sort that most modern office workers might wear to work on the same day of the office Christmas party. She also sipped from a Christmas-y coffee mug. During her narration in that opening scene, she kept making disdainful mention of her ridiculous clothes, the office decorations, and the coffee mug. She sat at her desk interviewing a man who had come in off the street to hire a detective (or to get legal consultation). He was a real nervous nelly, sweating and quivering as he explained his situation to the MC.
He came to seek help concerning his wife. The female MC narrated her subtle annoyance to us via jaded dead-pan, one-liners concerning the silly Christams-i-ness of the office, her own silly Christmas-y clothes, the nervousness of the man, and her ongoing assessments of each new tidbit of information that the man was slowly and frustratingly revealing one excruciating detail at a time.
He explained that his wife needed help. He explained that his wife was a lycanthrope (a werewolf). The MC immediately informed us via narration that being a lycanthrope was a serious public health hazard since lycanthropitus was a highly communicable disease, and failure to report a case of it to local health officals carried some serious legal ramifications. And next the nervous sweating man explained with deeply pained hesitation that his wife worked in a meat-packing house. And here the MC further narrated for us her legal knowledge that it was illegal for someone with lycanthropitus to work in a food preparation facility because of the risk of contaminating the food product with the disease and exposing the public to an otbreak of it.
In observation of the severity of the law in this regard, one of the MC's dead-pan one-liners delivered via narration went something like: "How could I blame them? I wouldn't wanna be fuzzy either."
Can anyone PLEASE help me recall this book series?
Thanks.
Anyway, I yanked a book down and thumbed through it. And now I can't recall the name of it. I do recall that there were easilly 5 or more books by that same author centered upon this exact same main character (a character I will describe below).
The story was narrated from First peson POV by the female MC who I'm pretty sure held a job as a very jaded private detective (or possible a very jaded paralegal) working very low on the totem pole for an extra crummy detective agency (or possibly an extra crummy law firm) and she thoroughly hated her job. The style of the book was that mildly shocking kind of dead-pan humor of the dark neo-noir flavor where the hysterically biting one-liners just kept on coming. As she narrated, I kept imagining her voice as a flat monotone right out of a Humphrey Bogart gangster film. It took place in a fictional city with an alternate reality setting whereby vampires and werewolves not only existed but were common knowledge to everyone in society.
The one book I thumbed through took place at Christmas time. Chapte One opened with her sitting at her crummy desk at her crummy job at that crummy detective agency (or maybe law firm), while self-consciously wearing slightly silly Christmas-y novelty clothing of the sort that most modern office workers might wear to work on the same day of the office Christmas party. She also sipped from a Christmas-y coffee mug. During her narration in that opening scene, she kept making disdainful mention of her ridiculous clothes, the office decorations, and the coffee mug. She sat at her desk interviewing a man who had come in off the street to hire a detective (or to get legal consultation). He was a real nervous nelly, sweating and quivering as he explained his situation to the MC.
He came to seek help concerning his wife. The female MC narrated her subtle annoyance to us via jaded dead-pan, one-liners concerning the silly Christams-i-ness of the office, her own silly Christmas-y clothes, the nervousness of the man, and her ongoing assessments of each new tidbit of information that the man was slowly and frustratingly revealing one excruciating detail at a time.
He explained that his wife needed help. He explained that his wife was a lycanthrope (a werewolf). The MC immediately informed us via narration that being a lycanthrope was a serious public health hazard since lycanthropitus was a highly communicable disease, and failure to report a case of it to local health officals carried some serious legal ramifications. And next the nervous sweating man explained with deeply pained hesitation that his wife worked in a meat-packing house. And here the MC further narrated for us her legal knowledge that it was illegal for someone with lycanthropitus to work in a food preparation facility because of the risk of contaminating the food product with the disease and exposing the public to an otbreak of it.
In observation of the severity of the law in this regard, one of the MC's dead-pan one-liners delivered via narration went something like: "How could I blame them? I wouldn't wanna be fuzzy either."
Can anyone PLEASE help me recall this book series?
Thanks.
