Reviewed by Jess

TITLE: The Fox, the Dog, and the King

SERIES: The Cassie Tam Files #2

AUTHOR: Matt Doyle

PUBLISHER: NineStar Press

LENGTH: 193 pages

RELEASE DATE:  July 23, 2018

BLURB:

New Hopeland City may have been built to be the centerpiece of the technological age, but some remnants of the old world still linger. The tools of the trade have changed, but the corruption remains the same, even in the criminal underworld …

When PI Cassie Tam and her girlfriend Lori try to make up for their recent busy schedules with a night out at the theatre to watch the Tech Shift performer Kitsune, the last thing they expected was for Cassie to get a job offer. But some people are never off the clock, and by the end of the evening, Cassie has been drawn into a mundane but highly paid missing pet case. Unfortunately, in New Hopeland City, even something as simple as little lost dog can lead you down some dark paths.

Until now, Cassie wasn’t aware that there even was a rabbit hole, let alone how far down it goes.

REVIEW:

This is the second book in Matt Doyle’s “Cassie Tam Files” series, and I think it is about equal to its predecessor in structure, characterization, and plot. It’s easy to get absorbed into the cyberpunk world of New Hopeland along with a tough PI and her tech shifter girlfriend, but so far, this world still has some rough edges that need to be smoothed out.

In the first book in this series, Addict, we’re introduced to the guarded private investigator Cassie Tam and the futuristic, tech-heavy world of New Hopeland. She meets her girlfriend Lori when she takes on the case of Lori’s deceased brother’s mysterious suicide. The plot in Addict was complex, but it kept things moving pretty well, and the climax was exciting. I was less riveted by the mystery in this book, involving a nonbinary Kitsune performer and their missing dog, but the plot did feel a little tighter, and it helped to further develop New Hopeland’s culture and society.

The technology is still a little hazy to me at times, especially regarding the tech shifting. Tech shifting is pretty much what it sounds like—using special technology to “shift” into certain animals. The people who do this are usually a part of one of three “F” categories—furries, fetishists, or freaks—and they all get something different out of shifting. Lori shifts into Ink, a sleek black panther, through the use of dermal plugs and tubes, and while the effect is unique and interesting, I can never get a solid visual on what a shifted person actually looks like. Sometimes they sound robotic, like a Transformer, other times cartoonish, like a fursuit. It makes it hard to imagine the actual effect of shifting, and in this book, it doesn’t become any clearer, which is a little disappointing.

Lori, though painted a little broadly in both books, makes a good match for Cassie. She compliments the protagonist rather than conforming to her. At the end of the first book, Cassie’s ex-girlfriend and close friend, Charlie, remarks that Cassie is a “chameleon” when it comes to relationships, often taking on the traits of the woman she’s seeing. But Lori doesn’t let Cassie get away with this. She likes Cassie for who she is, even when she’s a bit of an impulsive human disaster. Their romance moves slowly, but even without a ton of heat, they definitely have chemistry.

My main issue with these books is the slowness in explaining plot points, technology, and case clues. It takes Doyle three pages to describe something that could be boiled down to two paragraphs. We often get long-winded scenes of Cassie breaking down the clues in something as simple as a brochure for a musical performance, when really, most mystery junkies are quick enough to put the pieces together themselves. This causes me to glaze over for long scenes and become bored, hoping for the next scene of action or the next bit of development between Cassie and Lori.

After two books in this series, I’m definitely game to read more. I hope Doyle makes the next book just as unique but maybe a little more concise, compact, and clear.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

NineStar Press

Amazon