Deeds’s (
Copper Road) gas-lamp-style caper story is set in an alternate Seattle where magic users ply their trades, shapeshifters stalk the streets, and speakeasies cater to drinkers of both illegal booze and equally forbidden magical elixirs. The story opens at its end, with Dolly White leaving the scene of the final crime, glamoured to appear as the man whom she (among others) wanted to bring down from his unassailable position. As events unfold, the reader is taken backwards in time, in the tradition of the best caper stories, following Dolly’s trail as her motives and her methods become clearer. Along the way, magical Seattle on the cusp on the Great Depression comes to boisterous life, stalked by dangerous and greedy men who have planned for every eventuality—except Dolly.
VERDICT Readers who love heist and caper stories will be thrilled with Dolly and her quest to deliver much-deserved comeuppance to those who believed they are above the law. The gas-lamp setting gives just the right touch of magic and creeping dread to Deeds’s novel.
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