Robert Weinberg’s THE OCCULT DETECTIVE is Sidney Taine, your usual hardboiled private eye with an unusual client base. Known as Chicago’s “New Age Detective,” Taine is called upon to solve any and all cases with at least at touch of the paranormal, supernatural or otherwise oddball.
In this slim, enjoyable seven-story collection – spanning 1991 to 2005 – Taine learns the secret of a midnight El train stocked with the city’s dead, locates the Holy Grail, comes face to face with a werewolf-type creature with a taste for humans, matches wits with a supercomputer programmed to carry out Nostradamus’ world-ending prophecies and hunts down the sword of Excalibur. The other two tales feature Taine’s sister, Sydney; these are less amusing, but still diverting enough.
Taine may remind you of similar crimefighters with a fantasy-horror bent – namely, Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden – but I found Taine more pleasurable, because at 140 pages divided into seven stories, it never has a chance to wear out its welcome. Stefan Dziemianowicz provides an introduction to get you into the right frame of mind to appreciate Weinberg’s stories; by the end, you’ll appreciate them enough to want many, many more. –Rod Lott
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