The Spiral Labyrinth: Tales of Henghis Hapthorn, Book Two

Sherlock Holmes meets Jack Vance’s Dying Earth in The Spiral Labyrinth, the new novel from Matthew Hughes, acclaimed author of Majestrum. The universe continues to shift away from logic and reason, rewriting its basic operating system, bringing about a new age of sympathetic association, or magic. It was bad enough when Henghis Hapthorn, Old Earth’s foremost discriminator and diehard empiricist, had to accept this coming of a new age of magic. Now he no longer has the leisure to anticipate and prepare for the inevitable changes. Hapthorn finds himself cast forward and stranded several centuries in the future. This new world of contending wizards and hungry dragons is a difficult one to assimilate, and Hapthorn must do so without his magic-savvy alter ego. Worse, some entity with a will powerful enough to bend space and time is searching for him through the Nine Planes, bellowing “Bring me Apthorn!” in a voice loud enough to frighten demons.

From Publishers Weekly

The superior melding of fantasy, humor and detection seen in Majestrum (2006) is displayed to even better advantage in Hughes's second chronicle of Henghis Hapthorn, a discriminator (or consulting detective) on an alternate Earth. Aided by his intuitive inner self, Osk Rievor, and his faithful grinnet, an AI housed in an ape-cat body, Hapthorn accepts a request from wealthy socialite Effrayne Choweri to find her legendarily devoted and romantic husband, Chup, who vanished after looking into the purchase of a small spaceship. When the sleuth finds that several others who had considered buying the vessel also disappeared, he poses as a prospective buyer, only to be captured by a super-intelligent fungus seeking to expand its experience of reality by leeching the thoughts and knowledge of others. Hapthorn's wry first-person narration recalls Bertie Wooster, and Hughes effortlessly renders fantastic worlds and beings believable. News that a third adventure is in the works will surely please fans of many genres. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Resembling a futuristic hybrid of the arch escapades of Bertie Wooster and the thought-provoking cases of Sherlock Holmes, Hughes' Hengis Hapthorn novels delight intellect and imagination. As Old Earth's foremost discriminator (i.e., private detective), Hapthorn combines a logician's savvy and an aptitude for handling unforeseen perils with aplomb. In his latest adventure, his empirical skills face a serious challenge when he is unexpectedly transported centuries forward to a future in which magic has replaced physics as the universal modus operandi. Worse, Hapthorn's intuitive alter ego, Osk Rievor, has unaccountably abandoned him in a bewildering culture whose rival wizards appear bent on using Hapthorn as a hapless pawn in a magical power struggle. Only his wits and the erudition of his fruit-devouring mammalian personal assistant will save him from a fate involving either servitude or death. Hughes' masterfully eloquent style and clever plot twisting provide Hapthorn with an investigative panache rivaling those of the leading sleuths of mainstream detective fiction. Hays, Carl

About the Author

Matthew Hughes has lead a successful writing career—first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian ministers of justice and environment, and as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. He resides in a small town on Vancouver Island, off Canada’s west coast.

Reviews

News