I like the premise of this Urban Fantasy a lot and Arnold has fleshed out Sunder City some more in this work. But I just can't connect with the main character. I know that UF protagonists are loners and have a weird sense of humour, carry the weight of the world on their shoulders and often have a problem with addiction. Where I could connect easily with Felix Castor, Harry Dresden and Alex Verus, Fetch Phillips is just not my type of UF hero (yet).

Still, the series has potential and if you are a fan of Urban Fantasy you should give this a try. The first book is "The Last Smile In Sunder City".

Please note, Dead Man in a Ditch is a direct sequel to the first Fetch Phillips novel, The Last Smile in Sunder City. If you want my advice, if you haven’t already, I would start there. If you don’t what follows may contain some minor spoilers. Consider yourselves suitably warned.

The name’s Fetch Phillips — what do you need?

Cover a Gnome with a crossbow while he does a dodgy deal? Sure.

Find out who killed Lance Niles, the big-shot businessman who just arrived in town? I’ll give it shot.

Help an old-lady Elf track down her husband’s murderer? That’s right up my alley.

What I don’t do, because it’s impossible, is search for a way to bring the goddamn magic back.

Rumors got out about what happened with the Professor, so now people keep asking me to fix the world.

But there’s no magic in this story. Just dead friends, twisted miracles, and a secret machine made to deliver a single shot of murder.

Earlier this year I read Luke Arnold’s debut novel, The Last Smile in Sunder City. The novel introduced us to Fetch Phillips, a human detective trying to get by in a city full of all manner of fantastical beings. The twist? Magic had disappeared and every magical creature was suffering because of it. When Dead Man in a Ditch begins, Fetch is starting to make a reputation for himself, no matter how much he may not want it. There are still those clinging to the belief that magic is out there somewhere and that Fetch is the man to find it. What follows is a twisty-turny journey through the dark underbelly of a city that has more than its fair share of secrets. Murder is never just murder in Sunder City. There are conspiracies afoot and Fetch is going to find himself up to his neck in them.

I love the fantasy noir that Luke Arnold has created in this series of novels. The familiar rubs shoulders with the otherworldly. Where else are you going to find succubae plastic surgeons, or elves with out-of-control gambling habits? There is something deliciously grimy about it all. Our erstwhile gumshoe exists in a world of shadows where no-one is quite what they seem, and trust is a dirty word.

Fetch joins that proud tradition of crumpled, down-at-heel souls who make perfect detectives. You know the sort; they tend to become entirely consumed by uncovering the truth of a matter. They exhibit a dogged tenacity that demands they see any case through to conclusion irrespective of personal cost. In Dead Man in a Ditch there is little denying Fetch gets used and abused in all manner of different ways. This doesn’t stop him from moving forward however. Fetch is smart, daring and on more than one occasion just damned lucky. Another set of qualities that are going to help any investigator.

If you look deeper you’ll discover there is also an underlying sadness in Fetch. He has done things that he is trying to atone for, but you get the impression whatever he does it will ever be enough. This internal trauma fleshes out Fetch’s character. It makes it easier to empathise when you realise how broken he is. The plot of Dead Man in a Ditch goes some way to address this. Fetch finally reaches what I would optimistically call rock bottom. The city is a mess, Fetch’s life is a mess and he is finally forced to confront the demons of his past. Fetch has to make a difficult choice; he has reached one of those life-defining crossroads moments. I loved it.

Like its predecessor, this novel is played pretty straight but there are a handful of darkly comic moments. Our protagonist does have a tendency to run his mouth off and this can lead to ‘issues’. I get the impression Fetch is a believer in the ‘fake it till you make it’ approach to life. He certainly isn’t averse to bluffing his way through a crisis if necessary.

The evolution of Sunder City itself is also a key factor in this novel. Times they are a’changin and those changes are reshaping the metropolis from the ground up. The big question is can magic and science exist together comfortably? The author has obviously spent time on his world building, and it shows. The story builds on the groundwork set in book one, and expands upon it successfully.

I’m really enjoying this series. The characters are fun, the plots whip along at a pace and the whole premise smacks of endless potential. I’m starting to see evidence of a larger tale unfolding and I’d be more than happy if we see a new Fetch Phillips novel every year for the foreseeable future. The Last Smile in Sunder City was no fluke, Luke Arnold is an author well worth checking out*.

Dead Man in a Ditch is published by Orbit and is available now. Highly recommended.

My musical recommendation to accompany this novel is the soundtrack to The Snowman by Marco Beltrami. Tonally it is a perfect fit. Listening to the tracks while reading the novel added a nice air of tension to proceedings. Exactly what you need when you are trying to uncover a killer.

*I shall now go and wait impatiently for the next book in the series.

Urban fantasy and detectives often go together not unsurprisingly a mystery works better in a city than a quest. Detectives have free reign to explore all aspects of society from corrupt top to criminal underworld. Add in fantasy and that’s not a bad combination. I was very impressed by Luke Arnold’s debut Last Smile in Sunder City (reviewed here) so time for another trip to see if Fetch Phillips has learnt his lesson in Dead Man in A Ditch…and no I can happily confirm he hasn’t.

Sunder City is a fantasy world with dragons, unicorns, werewolves and goblins all living together but importantly the magic died. Imagine elves suddenly aged hundreds of years in minutes or a werewolf stuck mid-transformation. It’s a world where the glory has faded, and people have to try to eke out a living a shadow of what they were. Fetch Philips was heavily but unwittingly involved in the Coda that ended this world but has decided to try and represent all non-humans as the Man For Hire, but he’s puzzled when he finds himself with evidence that someone is killing people with magic. Has it come back or is something else going on. Fetch once again faces he sins of his past as Sunder City reaches a turning point.

I again enjoyed the inventiveness of Luke Arnold’s world it’s a bittersweet world where the non-human races have started to try to get on with life. A society destroyed by human greed and it’s a faded beauty that makes you long to see some signs of life. This time we get noir style casinos, drinking dens and strange shadowy powerful people turning the strings. Tonally while we again get Fetch’s dry, sarcastic narration as he treads the mean streets; we also realise this is a detective still learning on the job. He makes mistakes, misunderstandings and gets into things over his head yet manages to keep us on side through his lack of arrogance and sense of moral responsibility. Arnold really tests him in this story, and I enjoyed him having to decide (and finally admit to himself) what is he really doing this all for.

My reservation was pacing it’s a novel that is clearly setting up the wider arc of the lost magic and those who seek it and those who wants the new world order to stay the same. I enjoyed how capitalists are as always the real enemy but there is a lot of Fetch travelling from one place to another and in some cases the plot didn’t really move on in the middle section quote as fast as I’d had liked. The narration makes this work most of the time, but I did feel like this tale was very much setting up the next instalment, which I will be looking out for.

Although not quite the same surprise factor as the debut I am still enjoying this series. Its refreshing to have a male hero who isn’t the cocky wisecracking lead (nope no idea who you think I mean). The series is inventive, funny and packs an emotional punch especially in the finale as Fetch faces the past yet again. Well worth you hunt this down

This is the second book in The Fetch Phillips Archives Series, and I have to say I like it more than the first one. In the beginning, I wasn't quite sure. It looked like it would be very similar to the first one and it was in some ways but it was also quite different. Here is my review.

Things that I liked:

-As with the first one the book was nicely written. The writing is nice and easy and the pace of the story very well done.
-We get to know more about Fetch and his relationship with Amari, the love of his life, but also with his former mentor, Hendricks. It was nice to see how their relationship started and develop and it helped make us feel Fetch's pain instead of being constantly told.
-Now here is the big difference with the first one. The first book felt like a nice detective story, where a depressed detective solves a mystery. In this one, though despite the fact that the beginning of the books feels like a new episode of the "depressed detective solves crime", the book changes course a little and the stake when higher and I really like that. It felt a little more adventures, and we even got a battle towards the end.
-But the bit that I enjoyed the most was the morally grey topics. We have so many instances where characters actions are so grey and you can see the right and the wrong in their action and their thought and yet. For me, it was impossible to say "he is wrong, and he is right", and I enjoyed been torn and questioning together with Fetch the events and characters actions. That was very well done.
-The cliffhanger and the end, although it had being foreshadowed over and over, it left things off on a note that promises a great third book.

Things I didn't like

-Fetch's self-pity started to get old. Every time something happens we spend a couple of paragraphs in his head where he keeps telling us that everything that is happening is his fault and that everybody hates him and there are right, and he wished that he could fix the wrong he has done and how everyone is doomed. OK, we get it from the first book, you did something terrible, you are sorry and depressed and rightfully so but do we really need to go over that every two pages?
-Some important events were predictable and a little cliché. I wish we had a twist or that it was executed in a way that we haven't seen before. But not some things were textbook trips.

Dead Man in a Ditch is very much like the first book in many ways: Fetch gets in over his head, does questionable things because he can be led around by his nose, makes a mess of everything and resolves to do better, with questionable results. I’m amazed by the way these two books have made that work for me, in that I keep reading in the blind desperate hope that somehow he will stop doing the wrong thing. You know he’s not going to, and yet you still really, really hope he will.

Part of that in this book is because there are no great choices, it’s true. But I do have trouble feeling that Fetch is growing, because the whole point of him is that he keeps making the same damn mistake again — that’s been engaging for two books, but could it sustain more? I don’t know if more is planned, and I’d gladly read another book because it’s good pulpy noir-ish fantasy fun, but I’m lacking a certain level of satisfaction.

I could tell you more about the plot, but it really amounts to what I said. Fetch tries to investigate things, like weird accounts of magic that cannot be magic, and it leads into a larger plot that sees his vacillation writ large and messing things up for other people, across a fantasy city after all the magic is gone. (That’s Fetch’s fault, too.) He is just the ultimate loser, in so many ways, and I really do have to reiterate that I completely applaud the way the author still makes me care about him despite that.

So, if there’s another book, I’ll read it for sure; after that, I guess it depends where Fetch’s personality drifts off to next. This keeps sounding like faint praise, but I really enjoyed reading it — I sped through it!

DEAD MAN IN A DITCH is an engaging sequel as the future of Sunder City is up for grabs, and Fetch Philips has the potential to chose its path. If he stop his clever mouth getting him killed.

I can't name another noir I've read, and the only mysteries I read are usually YA ones, so I'm not sure if this book is indicative of genre or Luke Arnold's style. Unlike the mysteries I commonly read, this book doesn't have a continual focus an overarching mystery. Every scene and clue is not being driven towards one goal. There are lots of side vignettes that, though they do eventually come round full circle, really aren't obvious in the moment.

Instead, the story feels broader and more fantasy than mystery at times. This book is a lot longer than the first (by about 100 pages) and has a scope beyond the city itself. I really liked the zoom out and look at the wider world. While the book is largely set in Sunder, there are a few sequences outside. It helped show the changes to the natural world wrought by magic, and what happened in non-metropolitan worlds. The tug between industrialisation and the past was so interesting too.

Like in THE LAST SMILE IN SUNDER CITY, the voice of the book is brilliant - full of a grim snark and an attitude that's irreverent and beaten at once. It's a really fun lens for the story to be told from, pulling the reader in to the gritty world of Fetch Phillips.

The first book gives his backstory, but this one lets/forces him to come to terms with it. I loved how it played into the story, and the chaos a figure from his past brings. Also the way it plays into the title is so good! The character journey he's forced onto is brilliant, and the choices at the end over what to fight for, how to decide the future of Sunder City, was such a compelling element of the book

It was a joy to go back to Sunder City and check in on Fetch Phillips. Our favourite Man for Hire has been very busy making new friends and even more new enemies. He's also fed up with everyone thinking he's looking for proof that magic is returning to Sunder City. He's not. At least he thinks he's not. But then he gets called to the scene of an inexplicable murder. It must have been magic. Or is there something else, something new out there that could replace magic?

Every time I thought 'oh I know where this is going', Luke Arnold managed to surprise me with a new twist. Where the first book in the series had some slower moments, this one is a roller coaster from start to finish. There's murder and mayhem, a shady corporation is taking over the city, a grifting werecat sets up shop in Sunder City, and Fetch is still trying to repent for his part in the destruction of all magic.

Arnold expands his fantastical universe in this book. We are introduced to new parts of the world and we meet some new species that inhabit this world. But more than that, he introduces hope into his universe. Sunder City is still a bleak place, and Fetch is an even bleaker man, but there is a small sliver of light breaking through the clouds.

This was a highly enjoyable sequel, and I'm already looking forward to the next one.

This one was a marked improvement from the first book in the series, which I felt had potential that it never fully reached. Dead Man in a Ditch is much much better than it's predecessor and I'm super glad I got an early copy. Looking forward to selling this one in my store.

Another fun foray into to murky depths of Sunder with our snarky, curmudgeon gumshoe PI. Although all of Fetch's cases seem a bit monster-of-the-week, the overall story is a quite the page-turner as all the tendrils start to link up.

The underlying theme of an industrial revolution is nicely entwined with the new "magic" of human innovation and development taking the place of old magic. Conflicts arise between those who unquestioningly accept progression because they are desperate versus those unwilling to blindly accept change, desperately clutching at that glimmer of hope that magic isn't dead and gone. And as always, there is always someone in the background profiting from peoples misery. Villains are not always who we are told they are.

Thank you to Netgalley and Little Brown Book Group for the ARC.

Fetch Phillips, soiled hero of Last Smile in Sunder City, is back for another bout of wrestling with guilt and of attempting, somehow, to atone.

This may be a fantasy world, replete with (formerly) magical creatures, but Fetch, a Man for Hire, is noir to the core and wears the hardscrabble Sunder City like a ratty old trench coat. It is him, and he is it. From his shabby office to the women who come - trailing clouds of danger - for help, to the mean streets themselves, Arnold's command of the atmosphere of noir is pitch perfect, as this novel gets underway with a desperate woman whose husband has vanished, a gambling den and brushes with a police force desperate for results when a wealthy financier is murdered.

Of course, as readers of the first book will know, there's a whole other layer of darkness and guilt underlying Fetch's cynicism. This is a world from which the magic has fled, and it fled with Fetch's boot on its backside. All the beauty, all the power, all the wonder of a whole magical world is gone, and it was (largely) his fault. The survivors of that remember, and he would do anything, anything to atone. But there's nothing to be done. So Fetch sits in his office and opens the whisky bottle.

Now, though, there are rumours that the magic is returning. A particularly horrible murder has been committed in a way that can only be magical and, against his better judgement, Fetch is drawn into the investigation...

I liked and enjoyed this book. In fact I actually enjoyed it more so than its predecessor, because - while there is the odd flashback to Fetch's earlier life, to establish what he had done and why - most of it takes place in the present, which I feel gives Dead Man in a Ditch greater focus and pace. Bigger issues are also at stake here. Sunder City was ruined in the Coda, when the magic died, as it depended on underground magical fires for power, so the ill effects of that event spread to the human world as well. Ever since then, Sunder has shivered, lacking heat, light and industry.

Now, a new energy has come to town in the person of go-ahead Thurston Niles with his modern business methods and smart, grey-suited goons. Maybe this is what's needed to help Fetch's world move forward? The story therefore sees him caught between his regrets at the passing of the old world, his desire to cling on to what he has salvaged, and the need to find a way to better his city for the sake of all those shivering, starving humans (not to mention shivering, starving dwarves, gnomes, fairies, elves and the rest).

So we see Fetch conflicted, guilt and regret driving him one way, hope and logic another. He isn't helped when a figure from his past appears: that should have made things simpler but Fetch is too honest to trust simple - he's more likely to take it down an alleyway and try to beat the truth out of it. His sense of self-loathing dovetails neatly with that noirish framing, giving us a powerful sense of why he is so self-destructive, so gallant and yet so despairing.

Fetch is an engaging character, seemingly resigned to the continual hard knocks that being a Man for Hire in Sunder City guarantees (one wonders how much more he can take), seemingly sympathetic to the hatred that many in the magical community have for him, yet never - quite - surrendering to self-pity and - generally - trying to do the right thing. He outshines everyone else in this book, though, which is perhaps at times a pity - when he is verbally sparring with that face from the past, for example, it never quite feels like a contest of equals.

All in all a great read and one which ended just when it should, leaving me wanting to read the next book NOW and anticipating what catastrophe might hit Sunder next.

Recommended.

It has been six years since the Coda – the life-altering event that caused all magical power to dry up and disappear. Six years since the streetlamps lit by warlock flames have died out; six years since the city’s industrial space, driven by Dwarven machinery, has ground to a halt. So, it is quite a shock when a man turns up dead in a bar and the only explanation for how he dies seems to be the only one that’s impossible: magic.

Enter Fetch Phillips, a self-proclaimed “Man for Hire” who is just coming down off the high of solving the mystery of a missing vampire (this is the plot of Luke Arnold’s first book in the Fetch Phillips series, The Last Smile in Sunder City). Fetch doesn’t have much to his name – he lives in a dingy office on the fifth floor of a commercial building, and he struggles with an addiction to painkillers – but given his work on finding Edmund Rye, he has been asked to consult with the police on this matter. He is, after all, the closest thing the police have to an expert on magic. The questions everyone wants answers to: Who killed Lance Niles? And is the magic back?

This book didn’t blow me away, I must be honest. I recognize that it took me a long time to read, and this may have contributed to the book feeling more disjointed than its predecessor, but I found myself really struggling to muster up the interest to pick this book up in the evenings. The plot seemed extremely convoluted, and it felt a little bit like Arnold was shoe-horning extra plot points into this book for the sake of padding it out. The denouement of the book was, in my opinion, clumsy, and it felt like plot and character twists were thrown into the book for no reason: A number of characters from the first book, who were built up as respectable and basically good, were suddenly thrown under the bus for no reason in this book. I felt it was a case of lazy plotting, and I was disappointed by it.

I did enjoy the continued building up of Sunder City as a world to explore. Sunder City has a feeling of Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork, but with some grittier, darker sides to it. I think that as a setting for urban fantasy-type mysteries, this is spectacular, but the execution of the mysteries is a bit lacklustre. Arnold has a lot of promise, but both books in this series seem to be heavily influenced by the idea of magic returning. Each book seems to suggest that magic is on its way back, while simultaneously decrying that the magic is gone forever … and I just don’t know how much more of that I can take. It feels a bit like these books are building up to a conclusion where magic returns to Sunder City and everything goes back to how it was pre-Coda, but the process of getting there is drawn out and frustrating even by book 2.

I think that there is a lot of promise for these books. I think there is a market for murder-mystery type novels set in a more fantastical setting. Luke Arnold has taken this idea and given it a spin, and I enjoy his take on it, but the writing and the plotting is a bit clunky and needs attention. I definitely think I would give the next book in this series a try, just to see where the books are heading, but I’m not holding out hope. The Last Smile in Sunder City, I felt, was deeper and richer in terms of plot than its sequel, and I think this book suffered from an attempt at trying to include too many plotlines. I began to lose track of the characters and felt a little overwhelmed by the various storylines intersecting. Granted, they all came together in the end, but I think the same mystery could have been executed more elegantly with fewer, better-developed plotlines with more three-dimensional characters.

Personally, this book didn’t quite do it for me, and it’s a pity because I really think there is potential here. Maybe book 3 will be more my speed and things will pick up there, but for now, I would say that if you are looking for urban fantasy, you may enjoy yourself better elsewhere.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for the Advanced Reader’s Copy.

Dead Man in a Ditch is the second book in The Fetch Phillips Archives by Luke Arnold. Personally, I liked the first book but this one was better than that. Luke Arnold's writing was more powerful than the first book. In the first book, we learned what happened to magic and the backstory of Fetch Phillips. This book was more complex, dark, and more action packed. I think Fetch Phillips was more real this time. I enjoyed it a lot. Actually one of my favorite part of this series was Sunder City. It felt very alive and very melancholic. If you liked the first book then you'll definitely like this one too.

I have to admit, I was slightly conflicted about this book. Overall, I thought the writing style had improved greatly from THE LAST SMILE IN SUNDER CITY, and the world of the novel became more fleshed out and well-rounded. However, I did think there were a couple of misfires in the plot.

Picking up not long after the first book‘s climax, DEAD MAN IN A DITCH follows Man-for-Hire Fetch Phillips as he comes face to face with the possibility that magic might be returning to his world. And as the person who regrettably rid the world of magic, he won’t allow himself to harbour that hope. His adamance to prove that magic is gone for good leads him on a series of investigations that I honestly enjoyed more than the book’s climax, meeting a range of new side characters that I wish we could have seen more of.

I’ve always struggled to empathise with Fetch as a protagonist—or even to create a strong mental image of his appearance—but this book helped me warm to him slightly as he finally strives to do the right thing. His character voice is the perfect echo of classic film noir heroes, if slightly more self-deprecatory, but I’d like to see a little more drive from him, too. His main goal has always been to find a way to bring lost flame Amari back to life, but this is another book where that storyline doesn’t really progress, and it left me wishing for a stronger motivation for Fetch. Sure, he ends the book wanting to bring magic back, but so do a million other people in Sunder City. A tragic backstory does not a protagonist make, and I think giving Fetch a little more personal motivation would really help the reader to root for him.

For me, the highlight of the book was the return of Hendricks, Fetch’s old friend and mentor who was believed to be dead. Personally, I didn’t see it coming at all, and I was pleased to be able to spend more time with everybody’s favourite bisexual ex-High Chancellor outside of flashbacks. As soon as he was reintroduced, I had an inkling that he might turn on Fetch as Fetch once turned on him, but I wasn’t a fan of how it played out. First, let me say that it’s always clear that the capitalist Niles Company is the real evil in this book. Nevertheless, Hendricks and his fellow magical creatures are written to be just as villainous as they attempt to fight against the unjust systems that led to their loss of magic and continued suffering. Given the overt parallels between the book’s magical creatures and real-world minorities, this did seem a bit tone-deaf. Fantasy often allows us tackle real issues through a fictional lens and can help change the way we think about the world, so it was slightly disappointing to see a storyline that painted the clear victims of society in such an antagonistic light.

The book’s ending wrapped a lot of loose threads up nicely while still leaving plenty to be explored in a sequel, so I’m interested to see the direction that the series will take going forwards. All in all, the first two-thirds of the book were fairly enjoyable, and DEAD MAN IN A DITCH was a solid sequel—just not quite my cup of tea.

Earlier this year I reviewed the promising debut of Luke Arnold, The Last Smile in Sunder City. I liked it a lot – a world of Goblins, Elves and Fairies, but one where the Magic had gone away. Fetch Phillips was the reason that happened, and he was now living life as a rather seedy “Man for Hire” in a rather grubby city.

In this second novel of the series, things change up a gear. As the title suggests, Fetch finds himself a few months on from the events of The Last Smile still trying to make his way in life. Whilst working for Warren the Gnome in poorly-paid hustles, the police then ask for his cooperation in closing a murder case in the Bluebird Lounge. Why Fetch? Because it looks like Magic has been used to kill the victim. And Fetch, as the only Human member of the elite Opus, and the man who caused the Magic to go away, is an expert on such matters. There is no Magic left to use.

At the same time, in true Maltese Falcon style, Carissa Steeme, a High Race Elf, turns up at Fetch’s offices with a job, as it seems that her husband Harold, after being married for a hundred years or so, has disappeared. This coincides with a visit to Ms. Streem’s house by a gangster, after Harold and the repayment of gambling debts – though the wife claims he wasn’t a gambler. She wants Harold found – whatever has happened to him.

So, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to find that what starts as seemingly dissimilar cases end up connected, and the revelations along the way mean that Fetch finds himself both involved and even blamed for some of the events that follow. There are events that change Fetch and his world forever in this book.

This is a story that expands on the world of Sunder City. We see more of the dark taverns, the grim streets and the gambling dens, the locations where the consequences of being without Magic have a debilitating effect. Fetch introduces us to new characters and he meets some old ones. The fractious relationship between Fetch and the Sunder City Police Department may not be quite as testy as it seems, although Detective Simms even out-grumps Fetch.

As a genre we often love an underdog, especially when we know that there’s more to them than at first meets the eye. On the winning side here is the level of snark that Luke manages to give Fetch. But at the same time, we are aware that Fetch is also suffering, a victim of what has gone before. Whilst there are some much-needed reunions, other meetings are less pleasant. And Fetch realises that his past may not be all that he remembers it to be. Luke manages to fill in more of the background in this book, the telling of which helps us work out who Fetch is and why he is in this state. The tone is never especially happy, but the reasons for things being this way help the reader understand why. The clever thing is that the characterisation is not too deep, yet more than the usual basic outline.

By the end there is even a glimmer of hope that things might just be changing for the better, although Sunder City being the place it is, it may not last for long. It is possible that at least some of the events of the past may not be as irreparable as we once thought, whilst some are changed forever.



When I reviewed The Last Smile in Sunder City, I said that it was “clearly a debut novel, but one with an intriguing set-up, and once it got going became an engrossing and entertaining read that kept my attention happily whilst reading. There’s scope for more novels here… Now that the premise has been set up, I suspect things will now get very interesting.”

I’m very pleased to type that that is true. I enjoyed Dead Man more than the first novel, as the characters deepen, the situations become more varied and the author settles into the telling of the tale rather than having to do too much world-building. I would still read Last Smile first (although this book does stand-alone pretty well) but this one is good, and I read it through in a couple of sessions. I look forward to more in the future.

I can say I thoroughly enjoyed this book: it's gripping and entertaining.
I was happy be back to Sunder and meet again Fetch. His character is more fleshed out than in the first book and we get to know him better.
The world building is excellent and fascinating as usual, original and well thought.
The first part of the book is gripping and fast paced, a struggled a bit with the middle part as I found it was a bit dragging, the last part is excellent.
The atmosphere is quite bleak and I missed some of the humour I loved in the first book. If the first one was the lovechild of Butcher and Chandler, this one is a mix of fantasy and hard boiled with some of the tropes of the hard boiled mystery.
All in all it was a highly entertaining read that I recommend.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I honestly loved my first trip to Sunder City so when offered a chance to get my hands on this book early I jumped at it. While, it took me a little while to refresh my memory as to the characters and the setting once I got back into it all this book just flew by. The pace is exciting with twists turns and reveals.

We get a huge expansion of the world building, we get to explore lots of nooks and crannies of the city itself from its seedy underworld, gambling houses and dingy bars to its infrastructure and new developments. We also get to leave the city and explore old and forgotten communities outside the city. This book is set in the winter which is harsh on both the city and its surroundings and it lends even more suffering to the people of Sunder City, which is just so apparent in the worldbuilding.

I adore Fetch. I really like the choice of the narrative voice for him. it has a touch of the noir with the "Man for Hire" persona, but he is also filled with guilt and feelings of inadequacy. I love how he switches between the false bravado and cheeky banter to naïve and trusting person he truly is. He is so easily taken advantage of but not in an eye-rolling way but more in his need to trust those. To believe in people, to believe that the magic of the world is not truly gone. This leads to some great moments of heartbreak but also some moments of sheer stupidity when he follows the wrong paths. Arnold really isn't kind to Fetch in this book, and there for is not very kind to his readers hitting us with a good few heart wrenching moments.

The plot of this instalment was far more exciting in my opinion. It had fewer flashbacks into Fetch's past which I think really helped with the pacing. There were lots of twists, turns and reveals that just kept it moving. Occasionally there were elements and plot points I wish we had lingered over a little longer, as they tended to have significance to the worldbuilding but I overall really enjoyed the story being told. I also really like the balance between the humorous moments and the action or reflective moments. There is just a great balance to the story telling. I really liked how the cases Fetch found himself on intertwined and played into each other.

Arnold has created a mash of Urban and high fantasy like none other, and I am thoroughly enjoying them. It is fun and fascinating and I just devoured it. Like I said with The Last Smile in Sunder City "It just has the perfect combination of magic, mystery, pensive angst, and humour, to make it an excellent read. It is such a unique setting and story" I think this is true of Dead Man in a ditch. I really recommend picking up this series.

While I have yet to check them out the Audio is read by Luke Arnold himself so I imagine that could being even more to the story. I might have to pick them up to re-read while I hope for book 3.

It starts well – I very quickly felt right back at home in this grim, noirish city where everything is a bleaker, more tattered version of itself because Magic has now disappeared. I settled into the first two adventures well enough. Though wincing somewhat as Fetch seems to take far more than his fair share of beatings, and I felt suitably sympathetic at his angst and guilt. But…

It’s a longish book at well over 400 pages, and generally that sort of length doesn’t bother me – but just about the halfway mark, I was conscious of this one starting to drag. Fetch’s constant misery became irritating and the fact that the plot seemed to cycle round in ever-widening circles, so that what initially seemed like a progression just became more of the same – Fetch investigating a case… feeling miserable… getting beaten up… Rinse and repeat. It didn’t help that there was precious little light and shade – it was basically all shades of dark.

I’m aware that right now I’m not really in the right place for lots of bleakness. But the quirky cover and the strapline comparing this book to Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant series had me thinking that maybe this book would be a whole lot lighter, as by the end of the first book, Fetch seemed to have found some closure. The world is well described, and Arnold’s vivid descriptions of the once-magical characters are both imaginative and original – I love the premise. But Fetch’s constant angst was also annoying the other characters in the story – it comes to something when I find myself nodding in agreement as a major antagonist verbally shreds the hero.

If you are looking for a fantasy crime series with a real difference and enjoy your world on the grimy, grimdark side, then you may well find this one suits you. While I obtained an arc of Dead Man in a Ditch from the publishers via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
6/10

This second book in Arnold’s Fetch Phillips Archives takes much longer to get going than the first. Fetch takes on regular detective cases one after another that he solves pretty fast, if not always accurately or the way the client assumes. It isn’t until well past half-point that a plot begins to emerge, which ties in the first half of the book little by little. The story picks up pace towards the end, and with a few twists the book becomes unputdownable.

To his bewilderment, Fetch has gained a reputation in Sunder City as someone who is looking for the lost magic. As the person responsible for its loss, he knows that it can’t be revived and to believe otherwise gives people only false and dangerous hope. Yet he comes across events and items that seem to argue otherwise. There might still be magic in the world. Then he stumbles on a plot involving Sunder City and the well-being of its citizens and he realises that there are things more important to fight for than the past and the lost magic, even if it means going against those he loves.

Fetch is slightly less hopeless and a bit more determined man in this book. He spends less time drunk and more time doing impossible things. But he still suffers from the guilt of what he’s done, and he still yearns to be accepted by those he loves and respects, which causes him to do things he later regrets.

The narrative is more focused in the present than in the first book. I missed the flashbacks into Fetch’s past, but the few there were deepened the plot. The language isn’t quite as descriptive and rich than in the first book, and there are fewer insights into human condition, but it’s still a pleasure to read. The book is a little too long, but that’s all forgotten once the endgame starts. All in all, a good follow-up for an excellent debut.

Dead Man in a Ditch by Luke Arnold is the second book in the Fetch Phillips Archives, set in the formerly magical Sunder City. I highly recommend that prospective readers pick up the first instalment , The Last Smile in Sunder CIty as it explains a lot of the history and context that make the world this book is set in so vivid and believable.
Once again we become immersed in Fetch's work as a Man For Hire , and we follow him as he works on two cases, the murder of a new in town businessman and the disappearance of an Elf. At least one of these cases suggests that magic, in some form may be back, a prospect that excites the magical population of the city, but something that Fetch knows is impossible. Both cases are cleverly plotted and make for engaging reading and the P.I angle is really entertaining from the reader's perspective.
Once again the loss of magic, and the difficulties faced by formerly magical creatures in the aftermath of its destruction plays a big role in this book, and I enjoyed this aspect of the story a lot, it is one of the most unique features of the series. While we do have some flashbacks that give us more of Fetch's story, they seem less intrusive or better incorporated that in the previous book, so I found them less jarring. In fact I saw real progression in the author's skill in this book, and I have high hopes for where the series will go next.
Once again the book is suffused with dark humour and we meet some intriguing new faces that I hope will make further appearances as this promising series continues.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

After falling in love with Sunder City (which I reviewed here), I was looking forward to the continuation of the series. After just seven months, which feels like four weeks and two decades simultaneously, the second instalment in the Fetch Phillips Archives is just around the corner. When I was opening the ARC, kindly provided by Little, Brown Book Group and NetGalley, my first thought was: "Please be good!"

It's always a bit tricky to review the subsequent books without spoiling not only what's happening in the current chapter of Fetch's quest for redemption, but also the one before.

Let's start with the blurb:
"The name's Fetch Phillips — what do you need?
Cover a Gnome with a crossbow while he does a dodgy deal? Sure.
Find out who killed Lance Niles, the big-shot businessman who just arrived in town? I'll give it a shot.
Help an old-lady Elf track down her husband's murderer? That's right up my alley.
What I don't do, because it's impossible, is search for a way to bring the goddamn magic back.
Rumors got out about what happened with the Professor, so now people keep asking me to fix the world.
But there's no magic in this story. Just dead friends, twisted miracles, and a secret machine made to deliver a single shot of murder."

Sunder City hasn't changed much since we left it - there is no magic, and still no heating. Fetch continues to be stubbornness incarnate, existing on alcohol and painkillers, odd jobs, and sapping any remnants of hope from anyone who asks him for help in finding any possible traces of magic still alive.

Dead Man has significantly more action than the Last Smile - Fetch moves from one investigation to another. Along the way, he gets into a fair amount of troubles of varying nature and severity. There is, however, an underlying theme, which is deeply rooted in the changes in societal dynamics caused by world-impacting events and human nature.

I could talk a lot about the worldbuilding, author's social observation acuity, or if the portrayal of Fetch as a guilt-ridden wreck of a man with chronic pain is believable. What I want to touch on, however, is how Luke Arnold plays with and on emotions.

There wasn't much of hope during the events described in the Last Smile, but as time goes by, people are trying desperately to find a glimpse of hope to hold onto. In a way, Dead Man is a study of sorts about how dangerous hope can be and how far a man can go to seek for miracles. And this doesn't only apply to Fetch.

There was a particular moment in the story when a ghost from Fetch's past reemerged, and you may start to question whether the protagonist's reaction was convincing.
At a glance, it feels as if Fetch gave up the control way too easily. But how wearied Fetch must've been: every corner of the city feeding his remorse for years, every day him waking up and trying to do the right thing. Or do anything, at that.
When you're at that stage of exhaustion, and someone shows up to take the burden of decisionmaking from you, the relief is indescribably irresistible. Trust me, I know.

There was also a very subtle scene, playing on deeply hidden sentiments towards oneself, where, yet again, I realised how close I could relate to Fetch. To avoid any spoilers, I will only say "rabbit".

I also need to mention the evolution of the narrative. Although both books were written in close succession, it is very noticeable how Luke's writing has matured between them. The world has expanded, the connections between the characters deepened, and the juxtapositions are razor sharp and cut deep.

The trolls still haven't moved, but there may be some miraculous sparks of hope in this unforgiving world for all of us.