Murder in the Magick Club-Byron A. Lorrier, Esq.

Murder in the Magick Club
Byron A. Lorrier, Esq.
BookSurge, LLC, May 3 2009, $17.99
www.booksurge.com
ISBN: 9781439208311

Alcoholic Bryn Thomas owns and manages the seedy Magick Club where he employs an eccentric staff that no one else would hire. His waiters (Robert the snide commentator and Cal the snarling silencer) are former felons who stink at their job. As for his waitresses Madge is not customer friendly especially after three drinks while Bri actually services the patrons. Finally there is Honey the psychic, who besides reading the future is hard to read what she does for employment at the run down nightclub. Thank goodness the patrons match the quality of the employees and employer.

Still hung over from the night before, Bryn finds a body behind the dumpster. He questions his staff; but each insists they do not know the identity of the corpse or why he lies like a garbage heap next to last night’s garbage. Unsure what to do next, Bryn and his team discuss calling the cops with the suggestions by the waiters apparently persuading their employer as to what to do.

Fans who appreciate something atmospherically different will want to read the entreating but strange Murder in the Magick Club. The story line is totally character driven by those who work or drink at the dive as the whodunit even with a neat spin is more a device to enable readers to better know the misfits and outcasts who have forged an odd community. With a nod the Bret Harte (see The Outcasts of Poker Flat), Byron A. Lorrier, Esq. provides the audience with an insightful look at a group of seemingly losers with no place to go yet in an odd symbiotic way have forged into a sort of family unit; albeit as Homicide Detective Rutland says at the “Tragic Club”.

Harriet Klausner