u/Aarinfel

Genre: Paranormal mystery / urban fantasy, first-person noir.

Word count: 65,220.

Setting: Pontiac and Detroit, Michigan. November 2009. Recession-era.

Pitch

Elias Thorne is a private investigator working out of a dying strip mall in Pontiac. Fifteen years ago he was Sterling Cross, the headline act in a traveling carnival, before a fire killed everyone he loved and burned the gift along with them. What's left is a man who can mostly turn his sight off, who reads people for a living the way mentalists do, and who has built a life small enough that nothing can hurt him.

A young woman walks into a pawn shop and sells her grandmother's locket for two-fifty without haggling. The pawnbroker, Elias's only friend, asks him to look into it. The locket goes into a drawer. The case sits.

Two ordinary jobs come and go, both solved by cold reading and a worn silver coin. Then Elias picks up the locket, his sight breaks back open, and the girl is gone. Her apartment has been arranged to be found. The trail she left behind isn't one Elias is ready to follow.

Comp titles:Comp titles: Jim Butcher's Dresden Files (the first-person PI-with-magic structure), Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London (the procedural register), Ben H. Winters's The Last Policeman (detective work first, speculative element kept grounded and costly).

Content warnings: Violence (limited, not graphic), a missing young woman, references to a past fatal fire, a cult-adjacent ritual, moderate profanity, adult themes, on-page alcohol and tobacco use. No on-page sexual assault (no on page sexual anything, really). No torture-porn gore.

What I'm looking for

Does the opening (~first 3K words) hook you, or does it take too long to start?
Where does the middle drag, if it drags?
Does Elias's first-person voice stay interesting, or get tiring?
Does the supernatural shift in Act III land, or feel like a different book?
Anything that pulls you out of 2009 Detroit?

All-around impressions also welcome; the questions above are the highest-value ones for me.

Timeline: 4–6 weeks would be ideal. Faster is fine; slower works if we stay in touch.

Format: Word, PDF, EPUB, or Google Docs. Reader's choice.

Swap: Open to swapping with adult SFF, mystery, noir, or any first-person genre. Not a fit for romance, YA, or epic fantasy.

Contact: DM here.

EXCERPT:

Brrring The noise jolted my brain out of the flow of the ledger in front of me. I had been idly rolling a worn silver dollar across my knuckles, the rhythmic click-clack of the metal against my skin the only sound in the office; radio off, heater low, the kind of morning a man leaves alone until the phone shrieked. Of course, just as I was getting almost finished. It looked like if the payment for the Johnson job last week came in, I would be able to make all my bills this month, plus a little extra, and still have a whole week left to go.

I glanced toward the front window. The strip mall parking lot was a graveyard of cracked asphalt and waist-high weeds pushing through the fissures. On the glass of my own front door, the ghostly, peeling remnants of "Quick-Fix Tax & Title" still clung to the pane, overlapping my own hand-painted "Thorne Investigations." It was a fitting bit of camouflage for a guy who specialized in discarded dreams.

Brrring oh, yeah, the phone. I reached out and grabbed the handset of the ancient Bakelite. "Thorne Investigations, Elias speaking."

"Eli, got a strange one came in last night, you got some time to look?" Marc, the owner of Golden Opportunity Pawn a dozen blocks away on the other side of M-24, asked. Marc was a regular and always had something interesting. He usually called me to check on suspicious pawns and help track down deadbeats that owed on bad pawns or payday loans. Not glamorous work, but it pays the rent and keeps kibble in the bowl for Dutchess.

"Heya Marc, yeah, I have two clients in today, one here shortly and another after lunch. Is later tonight ok?"

"Yeah, or tomorrow even. I don't think it's hot, just got a hinky feeling."

"Standard rate, even for just 'hinky'," I deadpanned. He's a regular client, but the Edison bill doesn't pay itself.

"Yeah yeah, that's fine, I've had a good couple months. See you later. Tonight or tomorrow is fine. Bye."

And the line was dead before I could say goodbye myself. He's always busy like that. Ok. I made a note on my calendar for tomorrow.

The strip mall settled back into its particular quiet. Two of the five units were dark; that left nobody to make noise but me and the building. The baseboard heater under the front window ticked and hissed, doing its best with the front half of the room and leaving the rest to November. The mini-fridge behind the partition hummed its single flat note. The place had its usual smell: old paper and dust, and underneath it the faint mineral clean of fresh baking soda from Dutchess's box in the corner. Not unpleasant. Just mine. November light came through the front glass, filtered through the ghost of "Quick-Fix Tax & Title" still barely visible on the pane above my own "Thorne Investigations," and gave the whole room a secondhand quality, like it was running on someone else's leftover light. I picked up the silver dollar and started it across my knuckles again. Click-clack. Back to the numbers.

"Bing-Bong" the electronic sensor on the front door chimed. I looked at the cheap plastic clock on the wall opposite my ancient Formica desk. Only 10:30. The Palourakis meeting wasn't for a half hour yet. I looked towards the vestibule, its faded wooden paneling under the 'receptionist' window showing Eleanor bopping in.

Eleanor ran the Tux n' Gown on the other end of the strip mall. She was somewhere in her forties and wore it like a choice rather than a fact: dark hair pinned back with the practical efficiency of someone who'd stopped fighting it, a row of straight pins along her lapel from whatever she'd been working on before I'd unlocked my own door, a tape measure looped around her neck the way other people wore necklaces. Dark slacks, a burgundy blouse that had survived considerable tailoring work without complaint. Her shoes were black ballet flats, round-toed and completely flat, the kind that cost nine dollars at Payless and offered nothing in the way of arch support. Everything else about her was practical. The shoes were just for her. Her eyes were warm brown, the kind that noticed things without always saying so. She'd been a widow since the Gulf War, running the shop on death benefits and whatever the formal wear rentals brought in, which lately wasn't much.

"Good Morning, Elias!" She called. Always "Elias", never 'Eli' like others. I appreciated that. She came through the inner door with a ceramic mug in each hand.

"You didn't have to. I was just about to put a pot on. Got clients coming."

She stopped and gave me the look. "You have clients. Scheduled. And you didn't mention it yesterday."

"Didn't come up."

"Mm." She set the UAW Local 212 mug on my desk, the way she set things down when she'd decided not to push. "Consider yourself a cup ahead. The Bunn makes too much anyway."

At this, Dutchess, my petite calico cat, jumped down from the top of a tall combination bookshelf/filing cabinet that I got for fifteen dollars at the Goodwill. She trotted over to Eleanor and rubbed at her leg, making a gentle chirping sound, demanding her tribute of an ear scratch and then spinning to get one at the base of her tail. Ritual completed, she sauntered over to her food and water bowl, sat, and looked expectantly at me.

"You two, ganging up on me!" I stood slowly, stretching. I'm not tall, barely five-eight. But I'm solid, and wide. Pushing two hundred pounds. Could easily be heavier, if I could afford to eat more.

I limped over to the cabinet where I keep the cat supplies, as it turned out my right foot had fallen asleep.

"You have food!" I accused the cat. "You just ate the center pieces so you can see the bottom!" I picked up the bowl, gently shook it to resettle the kibble into a uniform covering.

Setting it back down, I got an indifferent "merow" and she sauntered off.

I stumbled back to my desk, picking up the mug and taking an appreciative sip.

"Thank you," I mumbled. Always embarrassed that she was a much better person than I was used to having around me.

"Oh, no problem. I've got an alteration this afternoon; need my hands steady."

"An alteration? Been a while since you had one of those."

"Yeah, I'm happy. It's been picking up a bit. Sold two dresses this month, and have almost all the tuxes in the common sizes booked for the winter formal season. Seems like 2009 is going to be much better than the past couple of years."

We could only hope. Michigan, and especially the area around the Detroit metro area, had been devastated by the "Great Recession" of the last couple years. Two of the five units in our shared strip mall were empty. One in three houses in the area was empty, condemned, or in foreclosure. A turn-around was exactly what we needed.

"I'll drink to that," I said with a mock salute of my mug. "Again, thank you for the coffee, but I don't want to be rude, I have clients here soon." Sometimes despite my past, I lacked all tact and politeness. She took the hint and waved as she walked out calling out, "If they're a new client, you may want to ditch the cheap shades."

I frowned. The sunglasses were not a fashion statement. Without the cheap plastic tint, the edges of the room developed a soft uncertainty, like a TV tuned to a dead channel waiting for a signal I prayed would never come. And it wasn't only the visual: underneath the fuzz there was a quiet that wasn't quiet, like a room full of people you couldn't see, all of them talking at once just under the threshold of where the words came together. The glasses muted it. They didn't shut it off. Nothing shut it off. They helped with the lights and the migraines and that was about as much as they did.

She was right, though. New clients didn't like dollar-store sunglasses indoors. I slipped them off and tucked them into my shirt pocket the way you handled something fragile you'd need back later. The room sharpened and the static rose to meet it.

I got up, stretched again, and started the routine. Bathroom: cold water on the face, hands washed properly. Behind the partition I pulled a fresh filter from the box, set it in the basket, and ran water through it for a few seconds. A trick I'd picked up somewhere years ago. I wasn't sure it actually did anything for the coffee. It was just what I did now. Two scoops of the Folgers Eleanor had left me last month after she'd bought the wrong kind for herself, water in the reservoir, the switch. The brewer made its tired throat-clearing noise and started in. I reached over and turned the radio on. 96.3 came up mid-sentence, the morning DJ already a half-thought into something I didn't bother to catch.

I grabbed the Palourakis file on the way back. By the time I sat down at the desk the office had begun to smell like a place where work happened. I flipped through the notes I'd made from our phone call last week. Stolen motorcycle from Bloomfield Hills. Police too understaffed and too busy to put actual effort into it. Well-to-do client wanted his toy back.

"Bing-Bong" the front door again. I clicked the radio off and stood up and walked to the reception window.

The cologne reached me first. Something expensive when it came out a few years back, applied with the confidence of a man who didn't ask for second opinions. He came through the vestibule giving the place a once-over the way you size up a property you might or might not buy. Pressed dress shirt, sport coat unbuttoned for the gesture of it. Slacks with a crease from a dry cleaner. The dress 'boots' were pointy-toed and three years past their fashion window; they'd been expensive when he'd bought them and he hadn't replaced them. Clean hands, clear-coat manicure, tan line on the ring finger. Soft-sided leather briefcase. Nails clean. Hands clean. Everything clean.

"John Palourakis?" I asked.

"Jahn." He stretched the A. "But you nailed the last name, that's usually what gets people." He delivered it with the easy cadence of a line he'd run two dozen times.

I nodded, gestured him through the inner door. "Come on in, have a seat. Can I get you some water or coffee?"

"No thanks. Let's just get to this." He propped the briefcase against the chair leg, reached in, and pulled out a stack of papers without looking at what he was doing. The practiced gesture of a man who'd done this at a hundred meetings and watched a hundred people watch him do it.

I settled across from him and pulled out some standard forms from my drawer. My fingers found the silver dollar in my pocket without asking. I brought it out and started it across my knuckles. Click-clack, click-clack. The static had picked up since I'd taken the glasses off. The coin gave it something to push against.

"Ok, go ahead and fill this out. Check the box for 'lost/stolen item', write the description and VIN if you know it, and then I'll take the retainer payment, get you your receipt, and we can see what can be done about your missing bike."

He pulled out a pen, silver and weighted, the kind with a click-button mechanism that cost more than a pen needed to cost. He started writing.

It was why I always opened a case like this. He got to look efficient. I got to read him while he wasn't trying to manage the read.

He wrote fast and confidently, the way a man writes when he's filled out a lot of forms and stopped thinking about them. The pen went easy in his hand, the practiced grip of a salesman. And the hand around the pen confirmed what I'd noted at the door: clean. Cuticles trimmed. Nothing on the knuckles.

I'd known a lot of motorcycle people in my life. None of them had hands like that. You didn't wrench on your own bike without paying for it in grease that didn't fully come off until the next ride. You didn't pay someone else to wrench on it without going down to the shop once a week to oversee, and the oversight cost you the same way. Palourakis had hands that hadn't touched the inside of an engine this calendar year. Maybe ever.

His left elbow had a patch of wear at the seam, the kind that came from leaning on bartops and conference tables and his own desk for years on end. The boots and the cologne and the manicure all wanted you to think he still had money. The elbow disagreed.

Then there were the papers.

He'd brought a stack: title, loan info, insurance coverage. For a missing item. People hiring a PI to chase a stolen thing brought a description and a hope and sometimes a photo. They didn't bring documentation establishing ownership, because nobody asked them to, because that wasn't the point of the meeting.

Unless they were anticipating someone asking them to.

Something wasn't adding up here, and I had a guess at the shape of it before he'd finished the form.

Local-ish writer looking for metro Detroit eyes on a novel set in 2009 Pontiac and Detroit

[Beta Readers Wanted] COLD READ — 65K paranormal mystery / urban fantasy, first-person noir, 2009 Detroit

[Beta Readers Wanted] COLD READ — 65K paranormal mystery / urban fantasy, first-person noir, 2009 Detroit

[Complete] [65K] [Paranormal Mystery / Urban Fantasy] COLD READ — a broken mentalist takes a case that wakes up everything he's been suppressing