Blood and Whispers

Haskins debuts with a gritty urban fantasy that’s chock-full of murder and deceit. Weary of doing battle with all manner of fantastical beasts in magical realms, sorcerer Thomas Quinn wants nothing more than to be left alone to a quiet life minding his occult shop in Philadelphia. But when two detectives come to him with news of a strange murder tied to a magical ritual, Thomas is thrust back into the hellscape of his past. Now he searches for the killer who would dare to upset the delicate balance between the human and magical realms. Brief bursts of searing action and Haskins’s endearing “surly curmudgeon” of a protagonist, however, are bogged down by long-winded patches of exposition that overexplain the complex machinations of this fantasy world. Fantasy readers looking for a bit of escapism will be drawn in, but many will be put off by the sheer amount of setup they’ll have to wade through to be fully immersed in the story. (Mar.)