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Arcane Casebook #0.5
Dead Letter
In 1930 New York, the sorcerers are the powerhouses of magic and the runwrights are the poor cousins. Private detective Alex Lockerby is definitely in the latter category, plying his meager magic skills to help people the regular cops ignore while barely making ends meet.
What Alex needs is a break. Just one good case to get his name out there and start bringing in business. When ambitious beat cop Danny Pak gets stuck trying to solve a John Doe murder, it might just be the break Alex has been looking for.
As Alex and Danny team up they begin to unravel a tale murder, jealousy, and revenge stretching back over 30 years. A tale powerful forces don't want to come to light. Now the cop and the private detective must work fast and watch each other's backs if they hope to catch a killer and live to tell about it.
Dead Letter is the prequel novella to the Arcane Casebook series. To get your free copy, click below.
What Alex needs is a break. Just one good case to get his name out there and start bringing in business. When ambitious beat cop Danny Pak gets stuck trying to solve a John Doe murder, it might just be the break Alex has been looking for.
As Alex and Danny team up they begin to unravel a tale murder, jealousy, and revenge stretching back over 30 years. A tale powerful forces don't want to come to light. Now the cop and the private detective must work fast and watch each other's backs if they hope to catch a killer and live to tell about it.
Dead Letter is the prequel novella to the Arcane Casebook series. To get your free copy, click below.
110 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2018
276 people want to read
About the author
Dan Willis
61 books314 followersDan is an award-winning, best-selling author who has been writing for most of his life. He wrote for the long running DragonLance series and has worked in the board game and video game industries as well. His current work is the Arcane Casebook series, a fantasy twist on the 1930’s noir detective story.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
June 18, 2020
When I first got this book for some reason I thought it was going to be MM, while I was disappointed to find out I was completely wrong, I was not disappointed with the story.
A very interesting and entertaining story full of mystery and magic. Alex is a great character and I loved Leslie and Iggy. Danny I think I need more time to get to know.
Despite not being MM I can see myself reading more of this series.
My only niggle is I never found out what they used the missing suitcase for.
A very interesting and entertaining story full of mystery and magic. Alex is a great character and I loved Leslie and Iggy. Danny I think I need more time to get to know.
Despite not being MM I can see myself reading more of this series.
My only niggle is I never found out what they used the missing suitcase for.
June 18, 2020
I caught up with all novels of Dan Willis' Arcane Casebook series couple of days ago; but I wasn't ready to say goodbye to Alex and co. So I decided to go back to the prequel novella; which was provided for free.
Dead Letter is the story of runewright private detective Alex Lockerby first meet Leslie -- who later becomes his secretary -- and Officer Danny Pak, which thanks to Alex, gets his chance to get promoted to a detective. Danny, of course, becomes one of Alex's good friends and often helps Alex if he needs connection of the police department.
So Alex deals with two cases, one related to Leslie (she first sees Alex because her husband's medal was stolen) and another a murder case that related to .
Good read!
PS: Noted a couple of typos, and one character's name change TWICE! But hey it's free, so I won't be complaining much 😝
Dead Letter is the story of runewright private detective Alex Lockerby first meet Leslie -- who later becomes his secretary -- and Officer Danny Pak, which thanks to Alex, gets his chance to get promoted to a detective. Danny, of course, becomes one of Alex's good friends and often helps Alex if he needs connection of the police department.
So Alex deals with two cases, one related to Leslie (she first sees Alex because her husband's medal was stolen) and another a murder case that related to .
Good read!
PS: Noted a couple of typos, and one character's name change TWICE! But hey it's free, so I won't be complaining much 😝
March 18, 2020
This is the free cookie short story that the author gives away with a newsletter sign up. It's a good short story on its own, and it explains some of the backstory about how Alex got working with Leslie and Danny. it's worth it for a good, short (free) read.
February 12, 2023
This was a great beginnings Novella. We get to see how Alex meets Leslie & Danny. It was action packed and intriguing. Love every minute of it.
January 19, 2024
A fun prequel entry to the Arcane Casebook files.
May 21, 2022
this novella is a prequal to in plan sight. It shows how our hero Alex met his friend Alex, his posable Love interest Amy (Danny's sister) and his secretary, Leslie.
An action packed book that gives an a bit of an insight into how these people have come together to form a great team. If you read in plan sight on the kindle this book is offered free. Well worth the read and lots of fun. My only complaint is that it was short and left me begging for more. I will be reading every other book in this series. The author does a great job of not only holding my interest but he writes about people who you care about and want to see do well. I cant wait to read more and even more again about Alex and his odd team of people who solve mysteries in this version of NY that just captures my innermost fantasies on how awesome life could be :-)
An action packed book that gives an a bit of an insight into how these people have come together to form a great team. If you read in plan sight on the kindle this book is offered free. Well worth the read and lots of fun. My only complaint is that it was short and left me begging for more. I will be reading every other book in this series. The author does a great job of not only holding my interest but he writes about people who you care about and want to see do well. I cant wait to read more and even more again about Alex and his odd team of people who solve mysteries in this version of NY that just captures my innermost fantasies on how awesome life could be :-)
November 6, 2021
I do enjoy paranormal fantasy. This is a prologue to the Arcane Casebook series, recounting the fist meeting of A!ex Lockerbie and his best friend, and at thst time, rookie policeman, Danny. I enjoyed it, since it sets the scene, so to speak for the Arcane Casebook series.
February 28, 2025
This was my first foray into this series, but I enjoyed it, and I plan to check out the rest of the series! It's got all that fun old-school hard-boiled detective novel stuff -- fedoras, cigarettes, brass knuckles, casual objectification of women, etc -- mixed with some light steampunky magitech. The detective stuff was fun to follow (I love me some investigating!) and I liked the characters. I listened to the audiobook, and the NYC accent of the lieutenant pleased me (I don't know how accurate it is, I just enjoy such accents way too much). This short story didn't blow me away with its originality or anything, but I like the combination of tropes and want to see more of the world.
You might be thinking "Why are you okay with the objectification of your fellow ladies??" and of course I did roll my eyes every time the author felt the need to remind us how ridiculously hot Leslie and Amy are (which was, literally, every scene they are in)... but these characters also were smart, competent, and useful, so I got over it. I know there are a few people out there who believe that describing the attractiveness of female characters at all (or correlating physical attractiveness with positive personality traits) is a bad thing that leads to stereotypes etc etc, but let's be real: pretty much all humans enjoy seeing (or in the case of books, imagining) physically attractive people. We can't help it. It's human nature to prefer an attractive person over a less attractive one (all other things being equal).
So I don't really care if fictional female characters are hot,... but mentioning it every time they show up is super unnecessary. I remember she's hot from the last time you wrote an entire paragraph about it; you don't need to go over it again if nothing's changed. She's still hot, I get it.
MOVING ON from that, I did have a few criticisms that jolted me out of the story... mainly:
1. Leslie correcting the silly dumb men about the price of roses might have been a fun bit if the price SHE quoted ($10?!) didn't seem so unreasonable for the time period... I was able to google approximately how much roses cost in the early 1900s in NYC in under 5 minutes. If you search for roses on this page you'll see that actually $1.50 or maybe $2-3 for a dozen by the 1920s doesn't seem unreasonable... and I'm sure much more accurate and specific info is out there if you put in another 10 minutes of time. I mean come on, man. You can buy a dozen roses NOW, 100 years later, for like $20 at Walmart or the grocery store (not nice ones maybe, but more than good enough for a college student).
2. Why would the police not have their own runewrights, who seem to have almost unbelievably useful abilities? How can Alex be scrabbling so hard when he's so unusually good at this work? In NYC it feels like lost dogs belonging to rich ladies alone should keep him in ramen noodles.
3. Speaking of ramen: Pak is not a Japanese name. It's a Korean (or sometimes Chinese) name. Japanese is always written (and pronounced) with a vowel or vowel-consonant combo for every syllable... the only exception is the letter "n". If it WERE a Japanese name, it would be "Paku" but that's not a particularly common last name in Japan. (On the other hand, Pak/Park is apparently the 3rd most common last name in Korea.) But since Danny and Amy have non-Japanese (or Korean) first names, I assume they were born in America, so I did appreciate that the audiobook reader didn't give them random questionable accents.
It was nice that the author wanted to have an interesting non-white police officer struggling with discrimination or whatever, but since my bf is Korean and I studied Japanese in college, it annoyed me a bit every time Danny mentioned he's Japanese. Again, the author could have googled this stuff very quickly. It's especially egregious since this guy is one of the main characters of the series. Sigh.
You might be thinking "Why are you okay with the objectification of your fellow ladies??" and of course I did roll my eyes every time the author felt the need to remind us how ridiculously hot Leslie and Amy are (which was, literally, every scene they are in)... but these characters also were smart, competent, and useful, so I got over it. I know there are a few people out there who believe that describing the attractiveness of female characters at all (or correlating physical attractiveness with positive personality traits) is a bad thing that leads to stereotypes etc etc, but let's be real: pretty much all humans enjoy seeing (or in the case of books, imagining) physically attractive people. We can't help it. It's human nature to prefer an attractive person over a less attractive one (all other things being equal).
So I don't really care if fictional female characters are hot,... but mentioning it every time they show up is super unnecessary. I remember she's hot from the last time you wrote an entire paragraph about it; you don't need to go over it again if nothing's changed. She's still hot, I get it.
MOVING ON from that, I did have a few criticisms that jolted me out of the story... mainly:
1. Leslie correcting the silly dumb men about the price of roses might have been a fun bit if the price SHE quoted ($10?!) didn't seem so unreasonable for the time period... I was able to google approximately how much roses cost in the early 1900s in NYC in under 5 minutes. If you search for roses on this page you'll see that actually $1.50 or maybe $2-3 for a dozen by the 1920s doesn't seem unreasonable... and I'm sure much more accurate and specific info is out there if you put in another 10 minutes of time. I mean come on, man. You can buy a dozen roses NOW, 100 years later, for like $20 at Walmart or the grocery store (not nice ones maybe, but more than good enough for a college student).
2. Why would the police not have their own runewrights, who seem to have almost unbelievably useful abilities? How can Alex be scrabbling so hard when he's so unusually good at this work? In NYC it feels like lost dogs belonging to rich ladies alone should keep him in ramen noodles.
3. Speaking of ramen: Pak is not a Japanese name. It's a Korean (or sometimes Chinese) name. Japanese is always written (and pronounced) with a vowel or vowel-consonant combo for every syllable... the only exception is the letter "n". If it WERE a Japanese name, it would be "Paku" but that's not a particularly common last name in Japan. (On the other hand, Pak/Park is apparently the 3rd most common last name in Korea.) But since Danny and Amy have non-Japanese (or Korean) first names, I assume they were born in America, so I did appreciate that the audiobook reader didn't give them random questionable accents.
It was nice that the author wanted to have an interesting non-white police officer struggling with discrimination or whatever, but since my bf is Korean and I studied Japanese in college, it annoyed me a bit every time Danny mentioned he's Japanese. Again, the author could have googled this stuff very quickly. It's especially egregious since this guy is one of the main characters of the series. Sigh.
April 19, 2025
Great novella if you are a fan of the series!
I liked how it showed the sharp contrast between the life Alex Lockerby is living nowadays - as a very powerful runewright and well established detective - compared to these humble beginnings. This story really makes it obvious how long he has come in terms of climbing the proverbial ladder.
It was fun and enjoyable to get back to his "low-tech" roots. The stakes weren't "Omg, the world might end!" high, which was kind of relaxing, compared to a lot of the books. I kind of liked that, for a change. 😂
I also liked getting to know how Alex and Danny met - and that they didn't initially click as best friends either. Leslie though... What a STAR. Just love her! 😁
Great performance by Alex Knox, as usual, too!
I liked how it showed the sharp contrast between the life Alex Lockerby is living nowadays - as a very powerful runewright and well established detective - compared to these humble beginnings. This story really makes it obvious how long he has come in terms of climbing the proverbial ladder.
It was fun and enjoyable to get back to his "low-tech" roots. The stakes weren't "Omg, the world might end!" high, which was kind of relaxing, compared to a lot of the books. I kind of liked that, for a change. 😂
I also liked getting to know how Alex and Danny met - and that they didn't initially click as best friends either. Leslie though... What a STAR. Just love her! 😁
Great performance by Alex Knox, as usual, too!
February 1, 2023
Okay, this was really, really good. It's a great mystery but it's also about beginnings. We learn how Lesly comes to work with Alex and we witness his first meeting with Danny Pak.
The mystery is really interesting, a murder rooted in a different one that happened 20 years before. And the way in which the story evolves is quite intriguing :P
I also liked the subplot with Danny's sister
I missed this series a whole lot, and I'm really happy that I now have some catch-up to do with it :)
The mystery is really interesting, a murder rooted in a different one that happened 20 years before. And the way in which the story evolves is quite intriguing :P
I also liked the subplot with Danny's sister
I missed this series a whole lot, and I'm really happy that I now have some catch-up to do with it :)
June 18, 2025
This was a great story you get to see how all the character met and find out about, Leslie, Danny Lt. Callahan and even Amy. This is a great series, I started them in March and have been binge reading the entire series, luckily the latest one gangster just came out. these books have everything well built characters with interesting back stories, plots that keep you interested and the whole concept of a deppresion era New York with magic is genius!
October 18, 2020
This novella is a great start to what promises to be an exciting, binge worthy series. The author effortlessly blends elements of noir and urban fantasy with a nice mix of characters. The story here is tight, full of twists, showing solid mystery chops.
I’m looking to the next one!
I’m looking to the next one!
November 28, 2023
A nice intro to the main character and the series.
Got this by going to the author's website and requesting it. He sends a link and you can download from that.
It's a good way to test if one is going to like an author's work without risking much money time.
Got this by going to the author's website and requesting it. He sends a link and you can download from that.
It's a good way to test if one is going to like an author's work without risking much money time.
August 4, 2024
This prequel story about the beginning of Alex and Danny’s friendship was fun to read. I’m spoiled by the higher stakes and more polished writing style of the following books in the series, but this was lots of fun to read.
December 11, 2024
Dnf'd at 45%
I liked the characters, but honestly, the plot wasn't interesting enough for me.
Also, the magic system is good, but the fact that everyone knows about scribblers and that it's an alternative reality New York in the 20s just didn't work for me, sadly.
I liked the characters, but honestly, the plot wasn't interesting enough for me.
Also, the magic system is good, but the fact that everyone knows about scribblers and that it's an alternative reality New York in the 20s just didn't work for me, sadly.
April 15, 2020
I read this after already completing Book 1, it was a good read hopefully elements from this will be sprinkled through the future books.
October 12, 2020
Fun short start to the series - it isn't actually where I would start, but a good backstory if you want more after starting on the main books.
December 6, 2020
If you haven't read Dan Willis' series Arcane Casebook you're really missing out. This is the prequel to the series
October 29, 2021
GR average is about accurate, I was thinking 4.3 ish.
February 28, 2022
Cool prequel, glad to see how the relationship with Danny starts, and Iggy's influence, and an idea of how much he teaches Alex between this and the first book of the series.
June 30, 2022
An excellent prequel to the series.
October 3, 2022
I only wish it were longer.
May 8, 2023
3.5. Fun little prequel story about how they all met.
July 11, 2023
Liked it well enough to recommend it. Anyone who enjoys urban fantasy would likely enjoy there detective yarns
November 22, 2024
Nice back(short)story to a fun series. And well done… Alex clearly has things to learn that he’d already learned when we first meet him, and Mr. Willis writes him that way here in this prequel.
December 15, 2024
4.5/5.0 Stars
It's a nice short, fun crime/fantastical/steampunk-ish noir mystery. Introducing characters for the longer series.
It's a nice short, fun crime/fantastical/steampunk-ish noir mystery. Introducing characters for the longer series.
January 16, 2025
RECOMMENDED
March 7, 2025
3.95 to 4.
Nice slice of life that still was way more robust than a prequel has a right to be
Nice slice of life that still was way more robust than a prequel has a right to be
October 31, 2021
I love reading and watching prequels after I've started getting into the world of the book. This was a nice way to understand Alex Lockerby and Danny Pak's relationship and how they became such good friends. It was also nice to see how Leslie came to work for Alex and how he moved out of the oft-referenced basement office and into his regular office from the early books.
Too bad he couldn't connect with Amy though. . .
Too bad he couldn't connect with Amy though. . .
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews