9Tail Fox Paperback – May 1, 2007

Tagline on the cover says: "A dead cop must solve his own murder!"On the back: "... His sudden and unexplained murder leaves his family reeling, and the SFPD bewildered. But nobody is more bewildered than Sergeant Zha, when a nine-tailed celestial fox comes to him at the moment of his death, and tells him he has one chance to put things right."Sounds pretty average paranormal-mystery, right? Only the author's style is more mainstream fiction, with a dollop of magical realism and straight fantasy and a tad of SF (supposedly this takes place in the near-future), and quite a bit of suspense/thriller mixed in. There's also psychological fiction--where we see brief glimpses of the troubled past and relationships of these characters... fragments that add to character, but not at all to plot. There is wish-fulfillment fantasy in that the character wakes in another body that has wealth and power and good-looks (the one big hit to my suspension of disbelief came when he wakes in a body that has been comatose for perhaps two decades and instantly is up and walking--apparently with no atrophied muscles! hmmm!).There are plenty of other things that strain credulity, but they are also magical and mystical, and there is compellingly good writing going on that is satisfying on a level that doesn't want to settle for the tried and true. Life isn't at all explicable and the strangeness and complexities in this tale may confuse, but they also feel right.The mystery is convoluted--involving may disparate elements, many only appearing in passing: a young girl who claims to have killed an intruder, human and animal experimentation, the Russian mob, a US general, missing homeless people, dirty cops, Stalin... Although it may be possible, this doesn't seem to be the kind of mystery one can trace through clues. It's more of the suspense/thriller kind, at times, with fancy watches and name-brand suits, powerful motorcycles and long-range rifles... And then there's the fox, more a tie to the detective's heritage and non-beliefs, than anything. Zha isn't sure what to believe, and neither are we, the readers. But it's a crazy ride, for those who enjoy that sort of thing.For some reason I have a weakness for Courtney's books, even though they are quite atypical and strange... or maybe it's because of that? But they're definitely not for everyone.

Man. I traveled from Southern Arizona to Wash D.C. today and spent my time with Mr. Grimwood. Thankfully, I had a two hour layover in Dallas, where we sat and sweated on the tarmac. I say thankfully, because I had such a damn good book with me, I didn't even realize I was being held hostage by the airlines once again. The time worked out well. I'd read the first three chapters yesterday and then as we crossed the Patomac into Reagan International, I finished the story. Glorious last paragraph which I could tell the author worked, reworked and perfected. I closed the book with a smile.When I bought the book in SLC, it was the cover that grabbed me. Jon Foster did a terrific job, but whatever he achieved was multiplied by the really amazing design work that Claudia did. I keep looking at the cover. I really dig it. I want a cover like that!!!And the book? The story of Bobbi Zha? I'm now a fan of Mr. Grimwood.From the sweeping plot to the subplots to the humanism in the characters, it's the kind of stuff I like to read. I'll read whatever he writes. Did the book have a few problems? Sure. A rough spot here or there, and a question I had left unanswered, but these were really washed aside by raw humanity of the piece and the author's ability to make San Francisco, not just the setting for the novel, but a member of the cast.

I spotted 9Tail Fox a few months ago on Night Shade's website and wanted to read it ever since (mostly because of the cover). I found it on Amazon for a pittance, read it, and was disappointed. It's not a terrible book, but I didn't really enjoy reading it, either.The things I liked were mostly in the writing and in the little parts of the story that didn't involve Sergeant Zha. I liked how there weren't any giant infodumps hurled at me; instead, small bits of information were scattered around like breadcrumbs. I had to follow them to arrive at a complete picture, and it was kind of fun. As long as I don't have to work too hard to understand a character, I don't mind doing a bit of piecing together. Sometimes it's nice learning about people one chapter at a time, instead of having it all crammed together in one or two paragraphs.The supernatural elements were pretty sparse-- this isn't so much an urban fantasy mystery as a mystery with paranormal elements vaguely touching the edges of it. And it's not even so much a mystery as it is a story about a policeman who messed up everything in his life, including his death. (It's got so many layers in it I'm surprised it hasn't been used in one of my English classes. Aha.)I think my biggest difficulty with this book was that I didn't like Sergeant Zha. In fact, I hated him most of the time. I think I was supposed to dislike him, though, since multiple times throughout the book characters said he was a bastard and a scoundrel, which is a pretty big clue that, y'know, he isn't a good guy. Plus he doesn't really do anything to contradict that until maybe the very end of the story.It's a very hard thing to do, reading a book where the protagonist isn't meant to be liked. I've had better luck with that sort of thing before ( Empress , for instance), but for some reason it didn't work for me here. I liked some of the other characters, like the ex-military homeless people who help Sergeant Zha out, but overall the book isn't filled with people I care about (or want to read about).9Tail Fox is an interesting book with a good plot, and though I didn't enjoy all of it, it wasn't horrible at all. It just wasn't my thing.

As always, I am first captured by Gromwood's elegant prose. Some of his books have plots that take a little settling in but the quality of his writing makes this a pleasant introduction rather than a grind through to the meat of the book.The setting of this book in a more or less real contemporary USA is a deviation from his norm. As such, I was a little unsure about buying it. Despite a mythological nine-tailed fox and a sort of reincarnation, the book is firmly positioned as a crime thriller. Somehow Grimwood makes the mystical element sit comfortably in this genre by almost taking it for granted rather than making a big point of it.As always, his characters are richly and sympathetically drawn. We are never given a heavy-handed complete explanation of any of them. Instead, as in real life, we are left to form our own opinions of them from a patchwork of exposure to their actions and coversations.Thank you, Mr Grimwood, for another riveting tale.

Mr Grimwood is a particular favourite of mine

Perfectly well written, but it's a poor, poor story and I've only given it 2 stars because 1 star is reserved for the truly bad.