A well-written and edited superhero crime mystery, this story is great for those who love crime stories with a fantasy twist.
Dane Curse lives in a world of black capes and white capes, super antiheros and super heros. One of the things I like about this book, apart from the excellent mystery and the nice twist near the end, is that the lines between the two are not a matter of good people and bad. Dane was a black cape until he found a way to earn an honest living, and the white cape replacement leader has motives of glory rather than that of helping people and working for justice. In fact, apart from the dead guy, it is Dane who comes across as the most noble, and he’s a simple guy with invulnerable superqualities and a couple of awesome weapons, but even when the odds are against him, he fights for justice. The true heros are not always the ones we think are the heros.
Dane is the usual gritty private detective one finds in crime stories, but he’s a likable character whose only vice appears to be whisky, The secondary characters are his caring, four-armed secretary, and the telekinetic daughter of a black cape crime boss. Both are failry light weight in terms of their character development but it’s sufficient for this kind of story which is focused primarily on Dane.
If you’re looking for a good crime mystery, I’d recommend it. The violence is quite graphic but there’s not a lot of it until the climax, and it’s unreality, true to comic book style, makes it easy to distance yourself from it.
I like the cover too.
