Catchpenny

January 1, 2024

Sid Catchpenny was one of the best thieves in Los Angeles before the crippling depression set in. At the top of his game, he could slip in and out of mirrors miles apart, snagging the most powerful and valuable magical artifacts in the blink of an eye. Now he's washed up, behind on his rent, and doubting his ability to fulfill the promise he made to himself that set him on this path years before. When an old friend shows up, asking for Sid's help locating a missing girl, he has no idea that this simple job will turn his life upside down. As Sid searches for Circe, he becomes embroiled in a scheme that involves major players in the magic world, a Sin�ad O'Connor album, a doomsday cult, a video game with real-world consequences, and his wife, who was murdered years before. VERDICT In this noir-tinged urban fantasy, Huston (Skinner) has created a world that is completely engrossing and full of wonder, imagination, and a good dose of music history. Give to fans of Neil Gaiman and Leigh Bardugo.--Portia Kapraun

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2024
A supernatural thriller set in a mystically bent Los Angeles of dark enchantment, looking-glass larceny, and apocalyptic gaming. Whatever you do, don't call Sid Catchpenny a detective. He prefers "thief" and so does everybody who crosses his path, whether they like him or not. Nonetheless, it's Sid's peculiar talents as a "sly" (a thief who's able to literally walk in and out of mirrors) that set him on the course of a missing-persons case that's weird even for a rococo urban fantasy like this. Indeed, Circe, the enigmatic 16-year-old Sid's looking for, isn't just "missing." According to her mother, Iva, "She is. Gone....Missing is like she's somewhere not where you left her. My sunglasses are missing....My daughter is gone." And so we're off on a hallucinatory adventure rife with the kind of extreme violence, false leads, and hairbreadth escapes you find in thrillers only amped up with 1980s-style rock lyrics, video game arcana, and a mysterious force dubbed "mojo," defined loosely (if not always clearly) as magical essences gathered from the emotions invested in objects, whether it's the piece of carpet where a beloved dog used to sleep, the Sin�ad O'Connor T-shirt Sid wears in memory of his murdered lover, Abigail, or a stuffed bat Circe's mother clings to as a remnant of her daughter's childhood. The more mojo one carries around in this world, Sid tells us, the more power one has--and the more power one gets, the more damage one can do. Which is something Sid fears may be happening with Circe and the company she's probably keeping, including suicide cultists and online gamesters obsessed by something called Gyre, whose content has demonic and potentially world-ending powers. As his passage in and out of mirrors yields more clues, more mojo, and greater peril, Sid is confronting his own painful past with its bad dreams and depressive interludes. The book's heavy rush of ornate imagery, outlandish villains, and exotic set pieces can get so intense that the reader may at times feel disoriented. But Huston's writing packs a rock band's hard-driving propulsion along with an electric guitar's plaintive lyricism. You may at times feel as lost in the ether as Sid. But you can't help sticking with his pursuit to its chaotic finish. If mojo is another word for magic, then this novel's loaded with it.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 1, 2024
Sid started out with grand ambitions, but for the last 14 years he's been sunk in a pit of depression. Before that, he was a sly, a thief who could use magic, or mojo, to travel through mirrors. Now a former friend wants his help, which is enough to get Sid out of bed and into Francois' cab. Their first stop is a house covered in cameras; Circe, the daughter of the owner, Iva, has disappeared, and Iva knows there's mojo involved. From there, Sid finds out about Circe's performance studies, a strange online game, and a suicide cult and starts to untangle the ways they're all connected. His past is coming back to haunt him--a past he hasn't been entirely honest with himself about--and all of his old friends and enemies have their fingers in a potentially world-changing pie. Sid is, to put it mildly, not a reliable narrator, and none of the people he owes are telling him the whole story, but the unraveling of his past and what happened to Circe is an entertaining read with a world-shaking finale.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 1, 2024
Novelist and screenwriter Huston (the Joe Pitt Casebooks) introduces thief and mystic Sidney “Sid” Catchpenny in this witty supernatural thriller. Sid is an aging former punk singer and occasional sleuth who can travel through mirrors, and often does so to steal trinkets that help him collect people’s “mojo”—a kind of magical currency. One day, Sid’s friend connects him with the frantic mother of Circe, a missing teen who’s been spending a suspicious amount of time attending a cultish Los Angeles theater club that meets in a barn. The action picks up when, while wearing his dead wife’s favorite Sinead O’Connor T-shirt, Sid finds the exact same image—with the exact same mojo—on the wall in Circe’s bedroom. He then attends a show Circe wrote for her theater group, where he meets her intense friends and the club’s shady director, Bruce, in whom Sid senses a reality-shifting darkness. As Sid digs further into Circe’s disappearance, Huston weaves in story lines about a dangerous video game, a death cult, and the fate of Sid’s long-dead wife, underscoring the antihero’s oft-repeated assertion that “everything is connected.” The resulting caper is fast, fun, and memorable. Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House.