Bawdy, sexy, over the top, flirty and provoking: the Georgia Kinkaid novels may share a lot of the same DNA as the Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series and Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant series – a supernaturally inclined hero tackles occult based mysteries in a city they know so well – but the tone of it is so incredibly different. Indeed it’s pretty much the CARRY ON version.
The key difference though is that whereas your Harry Dresdens and your Peter Grants use the detective story as the template, Georgia Kinkaid feels much more like soap opera. There’s a bookshop as a place of work and various small dramas that arise from that, as well as an array of work colleagues with their own issues. Away from the nine to five, there’s a collection of various supernatural friends, and a mortal boyfriend Georgia is having an awkwardly chaste relationship with. Oh, and somewhere amidst these little dramas, there’s a mystery concerning drugs to be solved as well.
Really, it’s a hang-out novel. You turn to Page One and you just hang out with these characters and enjoy their lives. It means that the plot passes the time rather than grips, but that’s fine as you’re just hanging out and enjoying the scenery. I’m two books in and I’m sure I’ll be back for some more one day, as I now have some cool, demonic Seattle friends, as well as a sexy succubus to guide the way, and I know it’ll be fun to just call in and see what they’re up to.
Fancy a free F.R. Jameson short story? There’s one available here.