Review: Who is Jack fooling?
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 10, 2014
"You can summon a demon if you wish to make a deal; we are not to be called just because you have a question you want answering. That's what Google is for ... I'm not the phone-a-friend option to be used whenever you're in trouble." - Proserpine to JackA number of reviewers seem so sure that Jack Nightingale is dead. Please, give his creator Stephen Leather more credit for inventiveness.In LASTNIGHT, Jack is pressured by his old nemesis in the Met, Superintendent Chalmers, to donate his time investigating the grisly murder of five Goths. Grisly meaning sliced and skinned alive.Leather has a talent for intentionally painting his ongoing literary heroes - Nightingale and Dan "Spider" Shepherd - into corners that transcend the immediate storyline. With the latter, it's currently having Shepherd balanced precariously on the fence that separates sanctioned (legal) and unsanctioned (illegal) wet ops. Only his MI5 boss, Charlie Button, seems to have a clear idea of what's needed in today's big, bad world; I've been lobbying the author for Charlie's own series for a long time now, but he doesn't listen. (See my review ofTrue Colours (A Dan Shepherd Mystery).)In Jack's case, as is implied in the very first chapter, it's how he's to pull-off a resurrection from being very, very dead and keep on battling supernatural forces of evil. As a matter of fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that LASTNIGHT was intended by Leather from its conceptual inception as a vehicle for Nightingale to turn a major corner in his life and get out of a rut. In the meantime, LASTNIGHT is a pretty good story all by itself that will keep Jack's fans happy.For me, a main attraction in the Nightingale series is the ongoing, albeit tense (and dangerous for Jack), relationship between Jack and the demon Proserpine, who wants his soul. In whatever corner of the world the former ends up, I hope Proserpine and her collie follow; it's an interpersonal dynamic that's even more intriguing than that between Shepherd and Button.One final thought, or perhaps it's a wish. What would happen if Proserpine and Mrs. Steadman started hurling lightning bolts at each other and Jack got caught in the free-fire zone? I'd pay to read about that! You taking notes, Stephen?