#Blogtour #Review - The Spider Dance by Nick Setchfield

Cover design by Natasha MacKenzie

The Spider Dance
Nick Setchfield
Titan Books, 16 July 2019
PB, 408pp

I'm grateful to Sarah at Titan Books for a free advance copy of The Spider Dance to review as part of the blogtour.

"Know first thyself..."

This is the second book in Setchfield's series about British agent Christopher Winter. In the War in the Dark, Winter discovered a new and unsuspected front on which the Service was fighting, a supernatural front, and that he had, in a now lost persona, been intimately involved in that struggle.

In The Spider Dance, we learn more about magician Tobias Hart, the man Winter used to be. Winter has attempted to escape the Service and start a new career as hired muscle to a firm of gangsters (this is London in the Swinging 60s) - but when things go wrong, he's drawn back in to the deadly dance...

I loved it that the central character in these stories has had, and lost, great power; is disgusted by that power and what it can do, and reluctant to awaken it; yet is forced to do so. Winter is a partial hero, a man more seeking to survive, to find safety, and to come to terms with his past, than to triumph - at one point in this story he effectively becomes a well paid hitman in the supernatural world. He's caught in a world where allies, ex friends, and enemies all seem to know who he was and what he could do, yet he doesn't know himself. In a vicious world filled with monsters and the supernatural, Winter seems well out of his depth and it isn't clear there he'll find the knowledge power he needs - or whether he even wants to.

Anton aspect that caught my fancy is Setchfield's skilful blessing of the tropes of the gangster novel - a "gentlemanly" crime family head with all trappings of piety, but whose hands are nonetheless filthy, an illicit trade in certain substances (though not quite what you'd think), a city in fear - with those of horror, in this case horror associated with particular monsters. This one is more crime than espionage, despite some early chapters behind the Iron Curtain (which nonetheless capture the authentic atmosphere of a 60s Cold War thriller).

In some respects it's a simpler story that The War in the Dark. There, it wasn't clear exactly what was going on, Winter's secret history was still, well, secret, and there were clearly several factions but we didn't know who they were. Now, a lot is out in the open (if if details remain obscure) and it's less a matter of Winter learning that his supposed life was a lie than of him living with the consequences. So The Spider Dance is more straightforward, but no less readable and the character of Christopher Winter, as Setchfield draws him, is a fascinating and subtle one.

Great fun whether you're into thrillers or horror and - of course - just the thing if you like a blend of the two.

To find out more about the book or order a copy, visit the Titan website here.

Review - The War in the Dark by Nick Setchfield

Cover by Natasha MacKenzie

The War in the Dark
Nick Setchfield
Titan Books, 17 July 2018
PB, 416pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a copy of The War in the Dark for review.

1963, and SIS assassin Christopher Winter is on the brink. He's caught between postwar austerity (bombed out building from the War still feature) and a 60s that has yet to begin swinging. He's a murderer, working in the service of law and freedom. It's a tangibly sooty, smoky world of depressing brownish cafes and Bakelite, set against the alluring prospect of technological white heat and progress.

But now, Winter's about to step into a war with the invisible powers, the rulers and principalities of this age, a war fought with runes and rituals and arcane knowledge that seem centuries away from satellites, nuclear weapons and computers.

It all begins with a routine job, the offing of a priest who's been selling secrets to the Russians. Winter's never killed a priest before, but why not? Things don't, though, go according to plan and soon there;s a trail of blood across London and Winter's encountering the Almost men. Convinced that he's been betrayed, he puts together what clues he can and head for Vienna...

This blend of the occult and espionage moves at a brisk pace. While it's clear there is a bigger picture, and the hints that Setchfield drops will eventually build to reveal what it is, the focus is mainly on Winter's immediate plight, hunted by all sides - the Russians, his own Service and shadowier enemies as well. There's no need, I think, to worry too yard about the trail that he's following as it leads him from one confrontation to the next - rather, one might worry about where he's going and what he will do when he gets there. Because Christopher Winter does have skin in this game, even if he doen't realise it. In fact, in a sense he is the skin in the game.

In counterpoint to Winter we also see the progress of a mysterious figure, Hart. Between them, he and Winter hold the fate of nations, of universes. But, enmeshed as they are in the rivalry between a decaying Empire and a rising Soviet Union, will they be able to do their duty - and what will that cost?

I enjoyed this mixture of treachery, blood and magic. Setchfield explores a crossover I've seen dealt with in various ways - from the World War Two sage of Ian Tregillis's Bitter Seeds trilogy to Tim Powers' Le Carre-esque Declare to Charles Stross's Laundry books, but The War in the Dark carves out its own distinctive space infused with a sense of paranoia and doubt that seems to foreshadow the domestic political chicanery of the 70s rather than the Great Game played against Russia (another way, perhaps, in which Winter is on the edge of a change).

It is an absorbing book, one which kept me guessing till the end and one which palpably creates a wider world to which I hope Setchfield can return, with or without Christopher Winter.