BOOK REVIEW | CARTER & LOVECRAFT | JONATHAN L. HOWARD

 

CARTER & LOVECRAFT

ABOUT THE BOOK

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year

Carter & Lovecraft is a Pandora's box loaded with all the wonderfully twisted stuff I love, including a two-fisted homicide cop turned PI, warped realities, a mysterious bookstore, the Cthulhu mythos, a dash of romance, and creepy fish-men. What's not to love? Jonathan L. Howard knows how to show his readers a wickedly good time. --Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author Dead Ringers

Daniel Carter used to be a homicide detective, but his last case--the hunt for a serial killer--went wrong in strange ways and soured the job for him. Now he's a private investigator trying to live a quiet life. Strangeness, however, has not finished with him.

First he inherits a bookstore in Providence from someone he's never heard of, along with an indignant bookseller who doesn't want a new boss. She's Emily Lovecraft, the last known descendant of H.P. Lovecraft, the writer from Providence who told tales of the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods, creatures and entities beyond the understanding of man.

Then people start dying in impossible ways, and while Carter doesn't want to be involved, he's beginning to suspect that someone else wants him to be. As Carter reluctantly investigates, he discovers that H. P. Lovecraft's tales were more than just fiction, and he must accept another unexpected, and far more unwanted, inheritance.

 

REVIEW

Mixing noirish detective fiction with the otherworldly horrors of Lovecraft, Carter and Lovecraft is an enjoyable mix of the two worlds.

Detective Dan Carter and his partner are on the trail of a serial killer who is murdering young boys. However, there seems to something off about the case. Carter identifies that the killer does not seem to have the same motivations as other killers.

Tracking the killer to his lair. Carter and his partner enter the building only for it all to turn to shit and end up with both the perp and Dan’s partner dead.

Following the suicide of his partner, Carter leaves the force to become take up the unglamourous job of a Private Investigator.

As Carter toils through the daily grind, he receives a surprise visit from a big shot lawyer who informs him that he is the beneficiary of an unknown estate and that the house he has inherited is in Providence, Rhode Island.

Deciding to go and visit the property, Carter is surprised to find that the property is a working bookstore run in absentia of the mysterious benefactor Alfred Hill, by his niece, Emily Lovecraft, descendant of the famous writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

When a local professor dies in a bizarre and mysterious way, Carter is drawn into the investigation  as his number was the last number called by the dead man.

As the situation draws on, the situation takes a surprising twist. Carter begins to experience strange dreams; his life is threatened and the legacy of Lovecraft becomes more prominent.

The book itself is enjoyable and as the cosmic horror becomes more to the fore, the pace of the book increases. The book works best when Carter & Lovecraft are together, and they bounce off each other.

The main protagonist themselves was a little superficial and stereotypical, but its when the eldritch horrors raise their heads the book is at its best.