Know Your Rites by Andy Redsmith: Murder, magic and now rap music. Oh joy.

Know Your Rites by Andy Redsmith Series: Inspector Paris Mystery, #2 Kindle Edition, 313 pg. Canelo, 2019 Read: July 7-9, 2021

With his “street” clothes and silly trimmed beard, Dirk remained the most bizarre magical dwarf the inspector had ever seen. Although he was acutely aware of how stupid that sounded.

What’s Know Your Rites About?

It’s been a couple of weeks since DI Nick Paris led the efforts to stop the demon invasion from the magical world—something celebrated on both sides of the portal, with parties, accolades from officials, TV interviews, etc. Now he just wants to get back home to Manchester and investigate some crimes involving humans–no elves, dwarves, talking animals, just people. It won’t be easy, but he really wants to put the whole magical world in his rearview mirror.

He’s called to the scene of a murder—a music producer has been killed in his home, and there’s a suspect in custody. There’s a catch—the suspect is a dwarf who’s in the non-magical world so he can pursue his dream of being a major rap star.

Dirk’s a pretty ridiculous character, but it’s hard not to root for him. You have a hard time believing he committed the crime and how do you not root for a guy who had to leave his own world to follow his passion? (the fact that he doesn’t appear to have a lot of talent, makes him more tragic).

There’s a lot of pressure on Paris to wrap this up quickly—the non-magical authorities are not wanting to publicize the fact that a human was killed by someone from the other side. Those on the magical side are wanting to negotiate trade pacts with the humans, and don’t want anything derailing that. Still, there’s something wrong with the case against Dirk, and Paris learns it quickly. But it’s clear that a “magical being” was the culprit. So the team from last time gets back together and crosses over to find their murderer.

We spend the bulk of this novel on the other side of the portal, getting a better understanding of the world and how it operates—including how the police department, postal service, and tourist travel work. We also get to meet several other magical creatures, and Redsmith’s take on them continues to be a winner.

For example…

Paris and the rest need to cover a lot of ground quickly, so Tergil hires some Lamassu to handle the transportation. What’s a lamassu? I’m glad you asked:

They were flying cows. Or, more precisely, flying bulls. Each had a bull’s body, with lion’s legs, huge wings attached to their shoulders, and a human head. A man’s head with striking noble features, a long yet neatly cut beard, and wearing a silver helmet. A silver jockey’s helmet.

And, for reasons that make a certain kind of sense, they have Australian accents.

I’m telling you, reading the passages about them justifies the purchase price. The rest of the book is icing on the bull-shaped cake.

The Humor: The Crux of the Matter

Paris frowned at her. ‘What?’ he said. ‘How did somebody called Ug Og end up with the middle name Serendipity?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the ogress. ‘It just sort of happened.’

She turned towards the inspector, baring her misshapen teeth in an attempt at a grin.

In Breaking the Lore Redsmith really swung for the fences to establish the series, but it felt like he dialed things back a touch. Which is not to say it’s bad, it’s just not as funny. I think the puns have really dropped off. I also think that Redsmith tries to squeeze more out of the “dwarf who can’t rap with ambitions to be the next Eminem” than is there. But it’s a ludicrous notion, so it’s hard to blame him for going back to it as much as possible.

In the first book, he established a strange, fantastic and ridiculous world (two of them, technically). Now he gets to play in it—he doesn’t have to try as hard, he can just play it straight and let the settings and characters bring the funny to the story just by being the way they are. I’m actually glad that he toned it down a bit. (just a bit—it was frequently chuckle-inducing, I’m not saying the humor is gone)

So, what did I think about Know Your Rites?

I was a little worried about returning to this so long after I read the first book in the series, and I shouldn’t have been, it took no time at all to remember the characters and situation. It’s just as enjoyable this time as it was last time.

There’s a straightforward crime story at the core of this, wrapped in Fantasy garb, enclosed in comedy. I like these characters, I want to spend more time with them, and I hope that there are more books to come. In the meantime, take some time to dive into this series.