Speak Daggers To Her: A Bast Mystery

Karen Hightower (aka "Bast") is a single which witch living in Manhattan, working as a freelance graphic designer while reading tarot cards on the side. But when a close friend dies mysteriously, Bast must turn detective to find out why.Bast's investigation leads her through the cults and covens of New York's occult underground--in search of a killer who may have black magic on his side, in Rosemary Edghill's Speak Daggers to Her.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From Publishers Weekly

This adroit and often sardonic blend of New York City hip and New Age neo-Paganism begins with a death, maybe by witchcraft, and introduces a modern witch as sleuth. Bast, whose mundane name is Karen Hightower, receives a desperate phone call from Lace Devereaux, who has just discovered the body of her lover, Miriam Seabrook. Bast becomes suspicious about the death, especially after discovering that the victim's ceremonial knife, her athame , is missing. Long a hanger-on in occult circles, Miriam had recently joined a new, highly secretive coven and had cut herself off from her old friends and haunts. Bast trawls the "New York Metropagan Community" for clues, drawing both indifference and threatening anonymous phone calls. She tracks down Ruslan, the authoritarian head of Miriam's coven, Baba Yaga, who is searching for the Khazar Wicca , an illustrated book purporting to contain the coven's rituals. Despite her reliance on capital letters, Regency romance author Edghill ( Fleeting Fancy ) deftly evokes the witchly milieu, exposing its factions and politics. Bast is a quirky, honorable protagonist whom readers will look forward to seeing again. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Regency romance writer Edghill ( Fleeting Fancy , LJ 3/15/92) introduces a thirtysomething Manhattan layout artist and witch (goddess worshiper) in this likable and lighthearted--if somewhat vacuous--murder mystery. After the sudden death of a younger friend, who has been casting about for a splinter occult group to join, Karen Hightower (a.k.a. Bast) suspects foul play. Her amateurish searches for evidence take her to occult bookstores, Wiccan covens, and magic rituals. A fanciful, fast read.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Quite a change of pace from Edghill's Regency romances (Two of a Kind, 1988, etc.): the murder of an aspiring witch. Miriam Seabrook doesn't show up for the TGIF at Chanters Revel, a Greenwich Village herb store, because she's dead. Her friend Bast (``Karen Hightower'' in her mundane life as a designer at Houston Graphics), troubled by a bizarre token--a mummified bird claw- -Miriam was wearing around her neck and by the absence of her athame, a ceremonial knife Bast had given her, decides to investigate. But since ``the way to find out exactly how Miriam Seabrook had died wasn't by asking questions,'' Bast instead hangs around the Serpent's Truth, a ``partisan and trashy'' rival shop; picks up a lead on Baba Yaga, the black coven (in Queens, naturally) Miriam had fallen in with; and attends a meeting in which the Baba Yagas say they killed Miriam because she tried to leave the coven. After that, fans of traditional detective novels should be warned, things get stranger, and much less interesting. Some of the background on modern Wicca (``witchcraft'' to you) is effectively offbeat, though Bast's aggressive homiletics (``environment is just a long word for where-you-are'') make her a sententious bore. A one-of-a-kind entry that could become, uh, a cult classic. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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