Book Review: Hidden City by Alan Baxter

January 15, 2020

This was fun and just the right amount of gross!

Hidden City by Alan Baxter

Released February 2018

Dark Fiction | Goodreads | Amazon

Source: Received for Review Consideration

When the city suffers, everyone suffers.

Steven Hines listened to the city and the city spoke. Cleveport told him she was sick. With his unnatural connection to her, that meant Hines was sick too. But when his friend, Detective Abby Jones, comes to him for help investigating a series of deaths with no discernible cause, Hines can’t say no. Then strange fungal growths begin to appear in the streets, affecting anyone who gets too close, turning them into violent lunatics.

As the mayhem escalates and officials start to seal Cleveport off from the rest of the world, Hines knows the trouble has only just begun.

My 2 Cents For Free!

If you’re in need of a fun, slightly gross, imaginative tale of magic and gritty urban fantasy with perfect little touches of horror and sarcastic humor sewn in, do I have a book for you! I needed this book after reading a downbeat, depressing one that threw me into a funk and I’m glad Hidden City called to me from the to-be-reviewed pile at exactly the perfect moment in time.

Steven Hines is a private eye with magical powers that connect him to the city. But as he says, “His city was a psychopath.” But don’t let him fool you, he loves her anyway, haha. His best friend Abby is a police officer with a big problem on her hands. The police have six unexplained corpses and three of them had “special abilities” like Hines. So she calls in a favor and they pair up to do a little investigating. But what they find is very odd. Very odd, indeed. It seems there is some sort of musical, magical fungi infestation that is cropping up and making people go murderously insane – after they strip down to their birthday suits! As if that weren’t enough, everyone who has magical powers is getting a power boost, there’s a crazed drug lord wreaking havoc and a once safe street drug is causing overdoses in alarming numbers.

Steven Hines will not abide this crazy in HIS city!

This book was an action packed, entertaining read. I enjoyed the characters and Steven’s well timed sarcasm as well as the gross knarly bits of the plot. And there were plenty of them! The relationships between the characters were very well written and I was SO thankful that Steven and Abby got their sexual antics done and over with way before the story began and that they discovered they weren’t compatible that way. I like romance, don’t get me wrong, but it would’ve been a bad fit in a story like this one. The true beautiful love story that left me holding my breath is between a man and a dog named Barkley. Their connection might’ve even made me go all misty eyed. I’d like to say much more but I fear I will ruin all of the dark little surprises for you and I don’t want to do that. Just know that it all ends perfectly.

If this imaginative, wild, fungus-filled ride of a story sounds like good fun to you, do yourself a favor and get to reading it!

*Thank you Alan Baxter for providing me with a copy of the book. This in no way alters any of my thoughts about the book. If it had been stinky I’d still you – thankfully it wasn’t!