Books › Carter & Lovecraft
Carter & Lovecraft
384 pages
A weary detective and a prickly bookseller trade dry banter while the fabric of reality unravels into cosmic horror around them.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping out of a rain-slicked noir film and straight into a creeping cosmic nightmare, armed with nothing but a cynical attitude and a loaded gun. The narrative moves at a brisk, investigative clip, balancing the cozy, dusty charm of an inherited Providence bookstore with the mounting, stomach-dropping dread of impossible geometries and ancient gods. It is a delightfully wry experience, anchored by sharp, pragmatic prose that refuses to take itself too seriously even as the stakes turn apocalyptic. The banter is dry, the atmosphere is thick with shadows, and the emotional texture is one of weary reluctance giving way to stubborn survival. It is the perfect escape for readers who want their hardboiled detective tropes thoroughly marinated in tentacled, reality-bending weirdness.
- Mood
- ominous
- rain-slicked
- unsettling
- cozy-yet-creepy
- Tone
- wry
- cynical
- pragmatic
- atmospheric
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- reluctant destiny · the weight of legacy · hidden realities · cosmic insignificance
- The writing
- Sharp, pragmatic, and laced with dry humor, grounding cosmic horrors in gritty detective noir sensibilities.
- The arc
- The protagonist moves from weary, cynical detachment to a reluctant but determined acceptance of a terrifying, reality-bending responsibility.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love the gritty, cynical banter of hardboiled noir colliding head-on with tentacled cosmic dread.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- body horror
- existential dread
- serial killer trauma
About the book
"Daniel Carter used to be a homicide detective, but his last case -- the hunt for a serial killer -- went wrong in strange ways and soured the job for him. Now he's a private investigator trying to live a quiet life. Strangeness, however, has not finished with him. First he inherits a bookstore in Providence from someone he's never heard of, along with an indignant bookseller who doesn't want a new boss. She's Emily Lovecraft, the last known descendant of H.P. Lovecraft, the writer from Providence who told tales of the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods, creatures and entities beyond the understanding of man. Then people start dying in impossible ways, and while Carter doesn't want to be involved, but he's beginning to suspect that someone else wants him to be. As he reluctantly investigates, he discovers that Lovecraft's tales were more than just fiction, and he must accept another unexpected, and far more unwanted inheritance"--
Description from Open Library.
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