The Book of Lamps and Banners

This is the fourth book to feature Liz Hand's Cass Neary, and it's a solid installment in one of my favorite mystery series. Cass is an aging junkie, and one-time star photographer, who barely survived the heydey of punk-era New York City and she keeps finding herself embroiled in mysteries that drag her through the underbelly of the world. The "cases," if that's how you want to classify them, usually involve art in some way, and in Lamps and Banners the object is a lost, possibly apocryphal book. But the object is almost beside the point. What grabs the reader here is Hand's writing; Cass's voice and point of view. All of it is a seedy wonder. Highly recommended.

You don't need a dark room or black bag to load or unload film - this makes NO sense. How would anyone take pictures of anything when film was the medium? I shot film for 20+ years and never had to do this.

Is Cass going to go straight after all these years? The new haircut and makeup signal something that looks promising. I have a glimmer of hope for her, but not much. It's a bleak and grim hope, which is pretty much the tone of this installment. It was nice to see Gryffin again and Quinn.

The whole idea of an ancient code that can change your brain, for good or ill, is absurd, but it's fiction and I went with it. More intense northern European mythology and symbolism. I loved the recurring raven though.

Cass Neary is spiralling into self destruction, fueled by booze and drugs, her beloved camera gone, thieving opportunistically, on the run and desperately searching for long-lost recently-found Quinn. A chance encounter introduces her to an incredbly rare book about to be sold for a fabulous amount, but the sale goes wrong when the buyer is murdered and the book is stolen. Seeing a chance to change her fortunes, she hunts the book, but there's a tech millionaire who wants it for an app that's supposed to cure traumatic memories but instead seems to trigger them and London is filled with neo-Nazis and whote supremacists - as tensions rise and danger threatens she becomes increasingly strung-out and desperate as much a danger to herself show more as the mysterious killer.

I love these books, Hand manages to make Cass both an anti-heroine whose underlying vulnerability keeps the reader enthralled and invested in her finding some kind of life or redemption. show less

death is everywhere in Cass Neary's world. an aging punk with issues and bad habits, she has a gift for staying alive anywhere, in any circumstances, though it's not in itself a goal exactly, just a side effect of her single-mindedness. except that suddenly there's a complication, the long lost Quinn, and he has only a few rules, but his are not negotiable. so at long last she considers changing. in search of Quinn Cass comes across an ancient book of symbols, and then a damaged girl who thinks code is the answer to everything, and then people who've come into contact with the book start dying. this carries Cass from Iceland, to London, to Sweden, on the trail of white supremacists and the weight of her own past. as usual, the case is show more pretty flimsy, leads and characters get abandoned along the way, but this is true to Cass's drug-fueled inclinations and a certain tendency for chaos to follow her home. meanwhile as always the writing is perfect, hard to the core but true to the subject matter, and Cass is a character that gets under the reader's skin, however much she is indifferent to her reception. show less

Fourth in the Cass Neary series, of which I've only read the first. The plot is rather silly (an ancient book that everyone wants that can mess with your mind, shades of Dan Brown) and the frustratingly self-destructive photographer protagonist who never recovered from the punk 90s is a mix of smart, vulnerable, and annoying, On the positive side, it's extremely well written and has some interesting things to say about visual art, which is a recurring feature of her fiction.

This title isn't coming out until September (it's May), but I couldn't resist reading it now. Elizabeth Hand is a new author for me, and having read The Book of Lamps and Banners, I'm now on a mission to find her other titles and read those to.

This mystery novel is set in the present day and focuses on a copy of a mystical book that was believed lost forever. People want that book—there's money, conflict, and scheming. The central character, Cass Neary, really carries this novel. I don't mean this as a complaint about other characters or plot elements; it's just that Cass Neary is a remarkable women, a mix of intellectual and artistic brilliance and sooooo much self-destructive behavior that it's remarkable she's made it to her show more fifties. She's a photographer; she's also an addict and an alcoholic. Yet, somehow she keeps fighting through the challenges put in front of her, addressing them through means both legal and illegal.

If you enjoy reading any kind of a mystery novel, give The Book of Lamps and Banners a go. You'll probably wind up like me, searching the internet for Elizabeth Hand's other titles.

I received a free electronic review copy of this book from the publisher via EdelweissPlus. The opinions are my own. show less

I really loved Hand's novel Curious Toys but not so much this one. Half way through I was good but then it all feel apart for me. It gets way too convoluted - a secret mystical book written by Aristotle, dart in the eyeball murders, a drug addled detective searching for the book and also a kidnapped woman on an isolated island where people with deep dark secrets always keep their doors unlocked so you can stroll right in. Also, tie in white supremacy and symbols that lead to mind control. Too, too much.