Mean Streets (anthology)
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| Author | Jim Butcher, Kat Richardson, Simon R. Green, Thomas E. Sniegoski |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Urban fantasy |
| Publisher | Roc Books |
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Publication date
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January 6, 2009 |
| Media type | Print (Trade paperback) |
| Pages | 368 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 233548413 |
Mean Streets is a 2009 anthology of four novellas featuring protagonists from four urban fantasy series. The book promotes the characters and authors to existing readers of genre, as well as provides new readers to the genre a sample of each series. It was well-received as providing good, intriguing stories consistent with style of each series. The four stories collected in this book are "The Warrior" from The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, "The Difference a Day Makes" from the Nightside series by Simon R. Green, "The Third Death of the Little Clay Dog" from the Greywalker series by Kat Richardson, and "Noah's Orphans" from the Remy Chandler series by Thomas E. Sniegoski.
Private investigator, and wizard, Harry Dresden warns his friend Michael Carpenter that someone is spying on him. Carpenter, a former heavenly warrior in the Knights of the Cross, was living a quiet life in Chicago with his wife and children after suffering injuries in his last battle. They find someone is trying to steal Carpenter's enchanted sword. After an attack Dresden suspects church involvement and seeks clues from Father Forthill. The kidnapping of Carpenter's daughter leads to confrontation near Millennium Park with a rogue holy warrior named Roarke Douglas to exchange the sword for Carpenter's daughter.
In Nightside, private investigator John Taylor and his friend Dead Boy are sitting in a bar called Strangefellows when a crying woman, named Liza, bursts in seeking Taylor's help. She cannot remember the past day, nor how she arrived in Nightside. Taylor uses his power of Sight to locate her husband, Frank. Dead Boy drives them to Rotten Row, where they find Frank at Silicon Heaven, a place for technosexuals. The host explains that Liza was there the day before but fled after learning about what Frank wanted. As Frank is being merged with a machine, Liza storms in and rips his heart out, though the Frank-machine no longer required it to live.
The will of a Mexican woman leaves private investigator, and Greywalker, Harper Blaine a sum of money on condition she hand-deliver a small figurine of a dog to the grave of Hector Purecete in Oaxaca City on the Day of the Dead. Even though these people are unknown to her, she accepts. On the way to Oaxaca she meets the dead woman's lawyer who tries to dissuade her from continuing. In Oaxaca she enlists the help of the teenage son, Mickey, of her host in helping her navigate the city and translating. While visiting a graveyard, Blaine finds another figurine just like the dog and is told that hers had been subject to witchcraft. After a few dead ends, she eventually finds the grave of the correct Hector Purecete and the fraud and blackmail by the lawyer that necessitated the elaborate set up.
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