Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice-for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. The worldbuilding is thin, but the tensions between the characters sweep readers past any questions that might result.Ī poignant and bittersweet family tragedy disguised as a mystery but with a magic all its own.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. The truth will out, even if it's truths that Ivy and Tabitha have each struggled to forget. While the whodunit twists and turns in satisfying fashion, Ivy's real search here is for peace and forgiveness: forgiving her sister, and herself, for their mutual histories. Or perhaps it's a teacher, such as the charming Rahul, who finds Ivy delightful-as long as she makes him believe she's a magician, too. And there's no shortage of suspects among the student body, from queen bee Alexandria, who seems able to exert unnerving control over everyone else, to her half brother, Dylan, obsessed with his foretold destiny.

But to solve the case, Ivy will have to enter her sister's world, where even freshmen can make pencils fly or glamour away a bad hair day. The two have barely spoken for years, ever since Tabitha's burgeoning magical abilities and Ivy's decided lack of them drove a rift between them. The dead woman was a teacher at the Osthorne Academy for Young Mages, where Ivy's estranged sister, Tabitha, also teaches. When she's hired for a genuine murder case, her ambition (and her empty bank account) leads her to accept the job.even if the clients are the last people she wants to be working for: magicians.

Ivy Gamble has worked 14 years as a PI, following around cheating spouses and solving insurance-fraud cases. A private investigator is hired to solve a murder at a magical academy where her sister teaches in Gailey's ( The Fisher of Bones, 2017, etc.) contemporary fantasy.

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey