Publishers Weekly
04/01/2024
Novelist and screenwriter Huston (the Joe Pitt Casebooks) introduces thief and mystic Sidney “Sid” Catchpenny in this witty supernatural thriller. Sid is an aging former punk singer and occasional sleuth who can travel through mirrors, and often does so to steal trinkets that help him collect people’s “mojo”—a kind of magical currency. One day, Sid’s friend connects him with the frantic mother of Circe, a missing teen who’s been spending a suspicious amount of time attending a cultish Los Angeles theater club that meets in a barn. The action picks up when, while wearing his dead wife’s favorite Sinead O’Connor T-shirt, Sid finds the exact same image—with the exact same mojo—on the wall in Circe’s bedroom. He then attends a show Circe wrote for her theater group, where he meets her intense friends and the club’s shady director, Bruce, in whom Sid senses a reality-shifting darkness. As Sid digs further into Circe’s disappearance, Huston weaves in story lines about a dangerous video game, a death cult, and the fate of Sid’s long-dead wife, underscoring the antihero’s oft-repeated assertion that “everything is connected.” The resulting caper is fast, fun, and memorable. Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
I absolutely loved it. Catchpenny is a brilliant book, full of heart and the language is pitch-perfect. If Elmore Leonard had ever written a fantasy novel, this would be it.”
—Stephen King
“A supernatural thriller set in a mystically bent Los Angeles of dark enchantment, looking-glass larceny, and apocalyptic gaming. . . . A hallucinatory adventure rife with the kind of extreme violence, false leads, and hairbreadth escapes you find in thrillers only amped up with 1980s-style rock lyrics, video game arcana, and a mysterious force dubbed ‘mojo.’ . . . Huston’s writing packs a rock band’s hard-driving propulsion along with an electric guitar’s plaintive lyricism. . . . If mojo is another word for magic, then this novel’s loaded with it.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Dark, soulful, laconic—like the very best of Tim Powers and Jim Thompson, thrown together in an L.A. dive bar after-hours. This is smart fantasy for our times, resonant and real, a love letter to youth and dreams and a biting critique of what the modern world is doing to both. Join down-at-heel, ruined dreamer Sidney Catchpenny and his ghosts on a turbo-charged narrative ride through the mean streets of a weirdly tilted noir, and find out what it means, once more, to care. Spread the word: Charlie Huston is back, and it’s a triumphant return. Until I read Catchpenny, I never realized how much I’d missed his voice.”
—Richard K. Morgan, award-winning author of Altered Carbon
“Gripping and deeply imaginative, Catchpenny has the soul of a classic LA noir and the beating heart of an epic fantasy. Filled with literal magic and an unforgettable cast of characters, this novel pulsates with life and heat, anchored by a lovable anti-hero you can’t help but root for. Much like the eponymous Sid Catchpenny, a thief who can travel through mirrors, this book grabbed me by the collar and pulled me across the threshold of its world. A dazzling joyride of a book.”
—Gina Chung, author of Sea Change and Green Frog
Library Journal
01/01/2024
Sid Catchpenny was one of the best thieves in Los Angeles before the crippling depression set in. At the top of his game, he could slip in and out of mirrors miles apart, snagging the most powerful and valuable magical artifacts in the blink of an eye. Now he's washed up, behind on his rent, and doubting his ability to fulfill the promise he made to himself that set him on this path years before. When an old friend shows up, asking for Sid's help locating a missing girl, he has no idea that this simple job will turn his life upside down. As Sid searches for Circe, he becomes embroiled in a scheme that involves major players in the magic world, a Sinéad O'Connor album, a doomsday cult, a video game with real-world consequences, and his wife, who was murdered years before. VERDICT In this noir-tinged urban fantasy, Huston (Skinner) has created a world that is completely engrossing and full of wonder, imagination, and a good dose of music history. Give to fans of Neil Gaiman and Leigh Bardugo.—Portia Kapraun
MAY 2024 - AudioFile
Pete Cross's dramatic performance of this fantasy/noir audiobook enlivens a fascinating story about a missing teenager and her connection to a popular video game and a doomsday cult. Cross's emotional commitment to the protagonist, Sid Catchpenny, showcases the messy, washed-up thief with debilitating depression and the ability to travel through mirrors. He can sense mojo, the magical essence tied to sentimental objects, which is used as currency by both criminals and elites in the story. His unique abilities and looming debts compel him to accept a case to find the missing Circe. In places where the prose meanders too long with Sid's thoughts, Cross is an immense pleasure, engrossing listeners within every passing contemplation. A.K.R. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2024-02-03
A supernatural thriller set in a mystically bent Los Angeles of dark enchantment, looking-glass larceny, and apocalyptic gaming.
Whatever you do, don’t call Sid Catchpenny a detective. He prefers “thief” and so does everybody who crosses his path, whether they like him or not. Nonetheless, it’s Sid’s peculiar talents as a “sly” (a thief who’s able to literally walk in and out of mirrors) that set him on the course of a missing-persons case that’s weird even for a rococo urban fantasy like this. Indeed, Circe, the enigmatic 16-year-old Sid’s looking for, isn’t just “missing.” According to her mother, Iva, “She is. Gone....Missing is like she’s somewhere not where you left her. My sunglasses are missing.…My daughter is gone.” And so we’re off on a hallucinatory adventure rife with the kind of extreme violence, false leads, and hairbreadth escapes you find in thrillers only amped up with 1980s-style rock lyrics, video game arcana, and a mysterious force dubbed “mojo,” defined loosely (if not always clearly) as magical essences gathered from the emotions invested in objects, whether it’s the piece of carpet where a beloved dog used to sleep, the Sinéad O’Connor T-shirt Sid wears in memory of his murdered lover, Abigail, or a stuffed bat Circe’s mother clings to as a remnant of her daughter’s childhood. The more mojo one carries around in this world, Sid tells us, the more power one has—and the more power one gets, the more damage one can do. Which is something Sid fears may be happening with Circe and the company she’s probably keeping, including suicide cultists and online gamesters obsessed by something called Gyre, whose content has demonic and potentially world-ending powers. As his passage in and out of mirrors yields more clues, more mojo, and greater peril, Sid is confronting his own painful past with its bad dreams and depressive interludes. The book’s heavy rush of ornate imagery, outlandish villains, and exotic set pieces can get so intense that the reader may at times feel disoriented. But Huston’s writing packs a rock band’s hard-driving propulsion along with an electric guitar’s plaintive lyricism. You may at times feel as lost in the ether as Sid. But you can’t help sticking with his pursuit to its chaotic finish.
If mojo is another word for magic, then this novel’s loaded with it.
