Cast a Cold Shadow: Shade the Collector #3

by Douglas Lumsden

Shade vs. Shades

Deadly phantoms stand in the way of Benedict Shade’s quest to “collect” (i.e., “steal”) an exotic magical artifact that could lead him to the fulfillment of his lifelong locating the prison of the legendary Earthmaker. But ghosts are not Shade’s only problem. A mysterious necromancer would like him to give up his quest. The police would like to frame him for murder. A government witch would like to send him to a labor camp in the frozen North. A dead woman from his checkered past would like to drag him kicking and screaming to her own private underworld. And on top of everything else, Shade’s new girlfriend wants him to give up burglary! It might be more than a shapeshifting were-cat can stand–or survive!

411 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 10, 2026

About the author

My parents raised me right. Any mistakes I made were my own. Hopefully, I learned from them.

I earned a doctorate in medieval European history at the University of California Santa Barbara. Go Gauchos! I taught world history at a couple of colleges before settling into a private college prep high school in Monterey. After I retired, I began to write an urban fantasy series featuring hardboiled private eye Alexander Southerland as he cruises through the mean streets of Yerba City and interacts with trolls, femme fatales, shape-shifters, witches, and corrupt city officials.

I am happily married to my wife, Rita. The two of us can be found most days pounding the pavement in our running shoes. Rita listens to all of my ideas and reads all of my work. Her advice is beyond value. In return, I make her tea. It's a pretty sweet deal. We have two cats named Cinderella and Prince who are happy to stay indoors. They demand that we tell them how pretty they are.

See my blog at https://douglaslumsden.blogspot.com/

Visit my website at https://douglaslumsdenauthor.com

Reviews

[Assaph Mehr]

I love Doug Lumsden's works, so am always excited by a new release.

What to Expect

This is the third installment in the Shade the Collector series (the second series in the alt-history world Lumsden has built). That said, the novels are pretty easy to pick up and get stuck in to. You can start here, or read from the start of this excellent series.

Expect another case where Shade is poked by the various mythological spirits in their machinations, and buoyed by his curiosity (sometimes against his better judgement) he tried to "recover" artefacts that will advance power games far beyond him. He loses an auction for an important artefact, and before he has a chance to think about how he might relieve the buyer of it later, said buyer smashes it with a hammer. Things get more complicated from there, what with ancient wizards, ghosts, and lucky rabbit feet.

What I liked

I loved seeing more of Shade's shady past, what it was like for a teenager dealing with becoming a shifter and (almost) losing his self-identity. Beyond that, we get the excellent world-building and storytelling that make Lumsden's writing so engaging, wrapped in noir aesthetics.

What to be aware of

as above, this is the third novel in the second series. There are recurring characters and references to past events. I don't think that would prevent you from enjoying the novel if you jumped in here first, but if you like to read in order and see things build up than you have a (very enjoyable) backlog to read.

Felix's and Jack's Reviews

Both Felix and Jack enjoyed the novel, as they had the series up to this point. While Felix takes a compatible approach to Shade's when it comes to the law (read: ignore it when it suits him), Jack, being a policeman, groused at the tropes of corrupt and inefficient police. That said, as an adventure story of someone dealing with forces beyond the normal, he found it entertaining (and occasionally laughing at Shade for making things hard for himself).

Summary

A great addition to the series, recommended to all who love alt-history urban-fantasy.

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Enjoying the reviews, but wondering who the heck are those Felix and Jack fellows? Glad you asked! Felix is the protagonist of the Togas, Daggers, and Magic series, an historical-fantasy blend of a paranormal detective on the background of ancient Rome, and Jack is the police detective running the Unusual Crimes Squad, dealing in occult crimes in modern-day Australia.

Assaph Mehr, author of Murder In Absentia: A story of Togas, Daggers, and Magic - for lovers of Ancient Rome, Murder Mysteries, and Urban Fantasy.

[Ziggy Nixon]

I need to talk to a ghost.

"Cast a Cold Shadow" by Douglas Lumsden is the third in his "new" series, "Shade the Collector". It also marks for me passing 10 books read by this author (plus one really awesome novella as well), starting way back with the first Alexander Southerland, P.I. adventure, a set of books I'd call a must for lovers of any genre under the sun! And though these milestones if you will are all well and good, I think what I'm most proud of is that with this latest offer, I've finally started to - as they say - "get it". I mean, I may be slow but I am determined in my own odd way! Because whereas our tough square-jawed P.I. could solve a lot of problems with his fists or a gun or even a little good luck when it came to knowing the right trolls and witches, the Shade books have been a lot more, well, Tolkienesque in their complexity.

New times are coming. A reckoning is coming. A scouring that will change the Earth.

Now I realize that analogy has no doubt made a great many of you spit your mead across the table, or if you're like Shade, your fine quality tea with extra cream in it. But let's look at the available facts briefly shall we? Even if this series takes place in New Helvetia ("A cesspool of asphalt and steel."), another amalgam of what I am convinced is part of a group of alternate earth-y locales in what passes here for California, we still have a plethora - and yes, as always I do count them to make sure! - of things like spirit bubbles and magic mushrooms as well as witches (male and female), dwarves, elves, trolls, ghosts galore, and yes, even dragons. Yeppers, that would be in the local case Lord Ketz-Alkwat, a "hundred feet of armored scales, nasty fangs, and razor-sharp talons. A master of every kind of magic. A supposedly immortal, flying, fire-breathing, supernatural killing machine." I mean, how much more convincing do you need? I mean, we may not have a magic ring but there's a kind of gemstone (which sounds better than just "rock") that's really a god's liver in play! And yes, it IS precioussss…

The liver is well known by practitioners of magic to be the seat of the psyche, or essential self.

Anyway, besides our lord and "savior" along with his hairy balls and flaming pecker - both of which seem to be either occupational hazards for these great beasts that rose from hell many eons ago or just uncomfortable anatomical defects - there are also a host of different gods, demi-gods, and just general "just believe so I can exist" types scattered throughout this tale. That is one of the most fascinating parts of Lumsden's latest story in fact, namely that we can truly start to figure out who Shyuh-te-cuht-li (aside: kindly note there is no "n" in that name so - please - do not pronounce it like I did every. single. time…), Kodoyanpe, Xolotl, Ometeotl and naturally Coyote are and how they fit into this reality. Let's just say the argument about which one invented the Earth and which gave it life will have you bleeding from your ears in no time ("I’m the only force in the world capable of keeping that stuffy old fart under control.")! Which may or may not make you a god as well once life springs from your exsanguinated drippings which, you'll find out, is a thing here…

On a scale of one to ten, how fucked am I?

In fact, we are faced with quite the cosmic conundrum in this tale in that many of these beings are in fact overlapping Gods of XYZ (not literally). For example, Coyote is our very aptly called Trickster, even though he is not this world's ONLY God of Trickery and Mischief . Heck, even Loki exists hereabouts ("…over there in Jastorf. And Anansi in Ghana. And Sun Wukong in Huaxia.") but you definitely can't go running to your Disney lawyers to argue this point because religion aka mythology can't be copy-righted (can it? Surely it's all public domain by now?). We are even treated to a battle royale (the 'e' at the end makes all the difference) of two gods of the Dead, noting that, no, no one who qualifies seems to be at all grateful about the situation ("The competing versions of Death continued their strange and mesmerizing struggle for dominance."). Especially once some of the observers join the newly not-alived…

The Trickster is a first class asshole. He’s the mother of all assholes.

It makes though for some really cool philosophical aspects, namely, are all the gods we smelly and mostly hairless apes have invented over the millenia just the same dudes and dudesses with different names, or does my God of Thunder hang out with your God of Bright Shiny Lights in Sky that Brings Fire and Rain during reunion week? Or are we just one quantum (ha! I had to get that word in!) plane disturbance away from meeting the REAL gods? All-in-all, it makes for really fascinating situations and weird parallelogrammatic, um, thingies ! Not to mention indicating that Hell may have different versions out there as well (personally, I think it's a place where you're forced to watch French TV but I'm having trouble getting the local parish to adopt that stance).

It’s not like I’m anyone important. I’m just your spirit guide. That’s all.

However, if I had to underline, sorry, underline the one thing I'll take away from this really complex but also incredibly entertaining story is I finally am beginning to understand Lumsden's take on shapeshifters, where we really get into not only the who but the why of Shade (about time I got back to him, eh?). Now if memory serves (a rare but moving experience for me), we first came across these special folks when we met Crawford the were-rat, who would later star in the aforementioned novella that I, um, mentioned afore. In Shade's case, he is a were-cat, being able to "break apart" into anywhere from 1 cat (+ a slightly reduced human form) to up to 12 cats, each with their own distinct set of skills and personalities. They're all still very much cat-like but if you've ever been owned by one (yes, I did write that correctly!), you know just how broad of a descriptive that truly is and can be!

You’re not the first shapeshifting pussycat who’s ever crossed my path.

What though made this particular "examination" of Shade's situation so fascinating - noting Benedict Shade hasn't even ALWAYS been his name! - is that this time we really look DEEPLY into whether "he (was) a human creature who transformed into cats, or twelve sentient cats who merged in some unnatural way to masquerade as a human"! And no, no one seems to be able to answer that question, not even our phalanx of multi-syllabically named god thingies. It really brought home then why folks of this type - and yes, we do meet others here but I'll be damned if I tell you what kind (hint: it's not a bunny!) - tend to go very much completely insane as they deal with their reality. Not knowing what exactly you are - plus being thoroughly tied into the dangers that accompany trying to survive as x number of separate parts so that the total whole of same stays unchanged - was really presented with the kind of "urgh, that does sound bad" aplomb that you don't just see every day. In other words, I loved it!

Time to face the music… You ain’t got nowhere to run.

And finally, if you're the least bit curious as to what happens when we die - where we go, in what form, are we happy, etc. - then again, this is the story for you. Because not only are we surrounded by the echoes and memories of an uncountable number of ghosts and/or spirits along the way (the cover will utterly creep you out AFTER reading this!), but again, we get a glimpse into the entire maintenance and management of the Lands (capital L, very important!) of the Dead. And yes, that is plural. Is it any wonder then that the Dragon Lords and their LIA comrades are actively seeking to get involved with these dealings so they can get in on any business and power deals that may come out of it all ("…they crave power. Power over the world. Power over everything. Even the dead.")? Which naturally then puts Shade - and his bestie buddy Dwayne aka the D-Man - in as much deep and (un)fossilized fresh coprolite as you can imagine! Ya dig, daddy-o?

You and me. We’re dumb as a couple of rocks.

All in all, an absolutely spectacular read. I swear though, I wish I were clever enough to really get an idea where some of these stories were headed way before that little 5-watt bulb in my head goes off. But it's an outstanding build-up that goes from a shocking scene at an auction - Shade is, after all, a Collector… even though most of his acquisitions are not done in public per se - to a fight between gods in the bad parts of town, where you just can't guess what decisions our hero winds up making. But when you're constantly being manipulated by the Trickster - not to mention getting the full "resistance is futile" treatment by the most powerful witch in western Tolanica - well, things are going to get weird… but so much fun!

I read this book as part of the pre-launch team. The opinions in this review are entirely my own.

[Vinay Badri]

Another gripping thrilling installment in the Shade the Collector series and this one does have massive stakes for Benedict Shade and a very consequential ending

A bunch of chickens come to roost for Bennie in this book - He has LIA breathing down his neck to complete a mission, Coyote, the trickster spirit encouraging him down a path which Bennie doesnt understand or control and his own personal spider of a compulsion spirit feeding his need to steal. Bennie also to has to deal with approaching 40th birthday and that he may have finally found someone to "settle" down with - what that settling means is something he has to work out. All this coupled with his compulsive need to steal. Making matters even more complicated is the fact that he has to head back to where he grew up and became Bennie and that was never a fun trip even at the best of times

If this all sounds too much, it definitely is for Bennie and one of the finest achievements of this book is to make Shade feel really puny dealing with the power, might, tantrums and the compulsions of the ancient spirits he is beholden to. While they dwarf Bennie in magnitudes of power, Bennie still can be an irritating burr in the saddle to these spirits.

The book starts off very promisingly and we are thrown into the conflict almost immediarely. It then takes a bit of a detour when we get into Bennie's youth and the ghosts of his past, literally and figuratively. He encounters the antagonist he has to steal from but realizes the situation is even more complex than he thinks and the antagonist is also a drug dealer of a kind with huge ambitions, ambitions that LIA and police are worried about and even the Coyote

Ghosts and mental buggery is not usually my cup of reading tea and these were portions I kind of struggled with. The author does a fabulous job of depicting Shade's past and his associated memories and you get the entire cat personality of Shade evolve through some fantastic writing in this section. I struggled as this isnt my favored reading themes and coulnt wait till things kicked to high gear again

And boy, does it kick off again. the last 25% is positively fantastic and we get the big showdown we have waiting for. Even as Bennie and Dwayne are caught up in forces beyond them, there are opportunities for them to influence the course of events and they grab those chances fabulously

The ending is also fantastically written and its a decision that Bennie could have swung either way. There is enough organic character development that makes this possible and is a testament to some of the great writing at play. The decision Bennie does take leads to interesting reveals to some of the long standing threads and is very neat and twisty in a sense. The ending promises to lead to interesting complications for Bennie for the future, one of them manifesting in a job offer

Cast a Cold Shadow is another intriguing and terrific entry into the world of Dragons and Elves and other powerful spirits through Alex Southerland (the previous series) and Benedict Shade (the current series). There is a lot going on behind the scenes and while some of the broader strokes may seem episodic, the author is building up towards something massive and I am in for the ride. This is a book that starts with a bang and ends super awesomely while delving deep into who Bennie is in the middle portion. It also ends interestingly keeping the reader on the hooks for the sequel

I am thankful to Douglas Lumsden for this early copy and I had a great time with this book

[Ann-Catherine Morner]

For a person (¿person?) who has a twelve-ways split personality, Shade copes well...

In fact, the whole cast in this tale suffer (¿suffer?) from split personalities. Which they deal with in various ways.
It might be that we all suffer from split personalities. Every time we make a bad descision, our personality splits. This is probably true for good descisions too, but we don't notice those...
If it is true for multiple universes, why shouldn't it be true for personality?

This is the best Shade book yet. I am already looking forward to the next one.