Review by Ian Keogh

When he was around Aloysius Crumrin kept his magical activities under the radar, and to date no-one has ever suspected Hillsborough over the decades has been home to all kinds of mystical intrusions. The FBI, though, have always maintained a top secret division investigating otherworldly threats, yet there have been puzzles they’ve never been able to solve. Now, though, an agent has taken the first steps to associating Aloysius with unresolved cases. The really clever aspect for readers of Courtney Crumrin stories is who Agent O’Dell associates with.

While Courtney’s part is greater this time, the primary focus is initially on Will Crumrin, returned to the world as a teenage boy in the USA, yet his earlier earthly childhood was in a well to do English family. More so than in The Charmed and the Cursed, Ted Naifeh makes an effort with the dialogue to ensure that not only does Will sound English, but that his vocabulary is dated. He’s lonely, slotting into the over-riding theme of isolation as Naifeh’s glimpses at the Crumrin family, although Will’s form of loneliness takes a different form to Courtney’s in the previous series. She adopted a front that became her personality, but he’s not as strong, and that becomes a factor when one of the menaces rears its head.

Because the stories are so engaging perhaps means Naifeh doesn’t get as much credit as he should for the exceptional art. The primary state is dark and gloomy, but there are places where brightness bursts surprisingly through, and the emotionally strong characters are posed in appropriate locations. The best trick of all is that when the monsters appear they could be something Hellboy would be called in to sort out.

The threat developed is far more public than usual, which alone makes for a change of pace, but the true mastery is how Naifeh delivers a real heartbreaker in some respects in what’s beautifully tied in to the previous book, and effortlessly sets up the next.