Ex-mob enforcer-turned-private investigator Isaiah Coleridge pits himself against a rich and powerful foe when he digs into a possible murder and a sketchy real-estate deal worth billions.Ex-majordomo and bodyguard to an industrial tycoon-cum-U.S. senator, Badja Adeyemi is in hiding and shortly on his way to either a jail cell or a grave, depending on who finds him first. In his final days as a … final days as a free man, he hires Isaiah Coleridge to tie up a loose end: the suspicious death of his nephew four years earlier. At the time police declared it an accident, and Adeyemi isn’t sure it wasn’t, but one final look may bring his sister peace.
So it is that Coleridge and his investigative partner, Lionel Robard, find themselves in the upper reaches of New York State, in a tiny town that is home to outsized secrets and an unnerving cabal of locals who are protecting them. At the epicenter of it all is the site of a stalled supercollider project, an immense subterranean construction that may have an even deeper, more insidious purpose. . . .
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Absolutely love Laird’s work, and with Worse Angels he takes his unforgettable protagonist Isaiah Coleridge into darker country merging noir and horror seamlessly. I highly recommend all the books in this series.
Laird is a Barron
Isaiah Coleridge is back in action after being hired by a former, and very corrupt, police officer to investigate the death of his nephew four years earlier. Ruled a suicide, Sean Pruitt’s body was found at the bottom of a shaft on the construction site of a large hadron collider in upstate New York. While there’s enough evidence to support the claims of death by suicide, there’s just as much evidence – or lack thereof, like Sean’s missing wedding ring and an ex-wife whose MIA after collecting the insurance payout – to point toward homicide.
Laird Barron laid some very solid foundations to point this series toward the supernatural with his inflections of cosmic horror laid against the background of a savage serial killer story in Coleridge’s second case, Black Mountain, so I was giddy to see how things evolved with the presence of a particle collider. While Barron is best known for his horror stories, the Coleridge books are more grounded in reality, with a focus on human evils. Despite the shadings of occasional horror elements to remind us of Barron’s background, the Isaiah Coleridge books are pure, hard-boiled noir, albeit with distinctively weird, maybe fortean, elements to help separate it from the pack.
And mind you, Worse Angels has plenty of weirdness. While Barron is wading deeply into noir territory with this series, you aren’t likely to confuse these books with the canon of Michael Connelly or James Ellroy. Beyond the hadron collider, we get some high-tech elements to parry the low-tech, Old World elements of cults, magic, and sacrificial killings. All this adds up to a rich thriller that will keep Barron’s horror fans happy, while mystery readers will keep focused on how all these puzzle pieces fit together.
For some bonus fun, we again get to see the hulking, half-Maori Coleridge lay a smackdown on some racists. I have to admit, these moments are some of my favorites of the series, and while it doesn’t quite meet the high bar set by Coleridge putting a serious hurt on an Aryan biker at the opening of Black Mountain, it is still pretty damn satisfying to read about these emboldened, loud-mouthed bastards getting their just desserts, especially in this day and age. I could eat up a whole book of nothing but Coleridge busting bigot’s heads all day long, especially if he brings along his jade war club!
Worse Angels shows there’s still plenty of mileage left in the Coleridge character and sets up a few tantalizing threads for future exploration, while also tying off some dangling plot threads from the last book. As far as Coleridge goes, he’s in top form here, and I really love his style. He’s a thinking man’s brawler, as well-read as he is well-armed, and his brains are just as important an instrument as everything else in his arsenal. I’m certainly hopeful Barron and his publisher keep these books coming, and Isaiah Coleridge is an important and welcome voice in the pantheon of literary gumshoes whom I look forward to reading about for many more years to come.