Monday, November 11, 2013

The Misfortune Cookie-Laura Resnick

The Misfortune Cookie

Laura Resnick

DAW, Nov 5 2013, $7.99

ISBN: 9780756408473



Twenty-seven years old New York Actress Esther Diamond is out of work and apparently is out of a boyfriend as NYPD Detective Connor Lopez slept with her on Christmas Eve (see Polterheist) but has not called her in the week since. On New Year’s Eve, Esther works a singing waitress gig at Bella Stella a mob and tourist hangout in Little Italy. NYPD led by Lopez raid the joint giving Esther a chance to emote her ire at her attraction before she is cuffed and the joint shut.



As desperate Esther obtains a bit part in a student's Chinatown film, her friend sometimes wise man Lucky Battistuzzi contacts her after escaping from Bella Stella to hide in a Chinese-Italian mortuary. As the residents of Chinatown prepare to celebrate the Chinese New Year, the odd couple believes deluxe fortune cookies are being used as a mechanism to curse victims including Lopez. They and Max Zadok the three century and a half old bookselling sorcerer must prevent a mystic psychopath from destroying Chinatown.



The latest Esther Diamond urban fantasy (see Vamparazzi, Unsympathetic Magic and Doppelgangster) is an entertaining lighthearted early January farce as the heroine teams up with a kind of retired hit man and a wizard to battle a miscreant cursing fortune cookies. Though the Real Little Italy is Arthur Ave in the Bronx, readers will enjoy Esther’s antics starting with her amusing acerbic tirade at Lopez and ultimately facing the crumbling of The Misfortune Cookie(s).



Harriet Klausner

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