Money Hungry

The Salt Mine #1

by Joseph Browning, Suzi Yee

Welcome to the Salt Mine, a black ops agency that monitors and manages supernatural activity from its subterranean headquarters in the deep mineral mines of Detroit, Michigan, USA. When magic is real, someone has to keep it in check.

Agent David Wilson—codename Fulcrum—has an assignment: assess the Salt Mine’s newest recruit, Teresa Martinez. She excelled as an FBI agent, but how will she fare in a world where demons and devils are real, magicians do more than card tricks, and karma is a real bitch? During her orientation, a series of deaths among pharmaceutical CEOs takes a bizarre turn, and Wilson must investigate arcane forces with Martinez in tow.

Will they uncover the truth in time to neutralize the threat?

Money Hungry is the first of an exciting new science fiction series featuring covert agents who try to keep a lid on the wild and woolly magical world. If you enjoy the TV shows Warehouse 13, The Librarians, The Dresden Files, Eureka, Relic Hunter, X-Files, or Fringe, you’ll enjoy The Salt Mine series.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Ebooks, Mystery

216 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2019

Reviews

[Karen]

I enjoyed this book. I found the characters engaging and the plot well-executed, if somewhat rushed toward the end. I enjoyed the fresh approach to fighting crime of magical bent. But the many typos spoiled the experience. Typos such as "corner" instead of "coroner" (which occurred multiple times), "murder" instead of "murderer" ("It would be like trying to find a murder using their fingerprints"), and many more. If typos in a book you've bought do not make you grit your teeth, then enjoy! Otherwise, be warned.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty fun - kind of an X-Files meets The Magicians sort of thing. The characters and setting were interesting and the mystery kept me guessing but there were a lot of typos and usage errors (notably ’conscious’ instead of ’conscience’ which is one that always really irks me) that threw me out of the story.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable and fast read. It's a tweak on the usual magical system where there are costs and debts to practicing, so that was fun. It got a little info-heavy in sections, instead of weaving it more into the narrative, but the main characters were intriguing, and the secondary characters especially so. Looking forward to the next in the series.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this book almost turned me away from it. I thought, heck, do I really want to read another paranormal mystery about greedy people? But I decided to give it a try anyway and am I ever glad that I did. Browning and Yee are bringing something new to the paranormal genre—a willingness to explore very original threats—no werewolves and vampires in this book.

Wilson and Martinez are agents of the Saltmine—a joint FBI CIA venture to protect America from the supernatural. Together with a rather mysterious and intimidating leader, and a conjoined pair of librarians, they track down supernatural threats around the world to minimize the harm they cause and the danger they might pose to the country.

This first novel was absolutely riveting. A wealthy pharmaceutical CEO who seems, atypically, bent on bringing his drugs to the market for as cheap a price as possible, has an unusual problem. He can’t stop eating money—literally. His money of choice is the gold coin, and his obsession is killing him. But why is he driven to eat coins? And what drove a handful of other pharmaceutical CEOs to die in bizarre ways?

Browning and Yee have created a fabulous mystery here and as the reader begins to learn how magic works, it will become increasingly apparent that there are a lot of people who could be responsible for the crime—a crime that might actually be the accidental side effect of magic gone wrong. Magic apparently always has negative karma attached to it, which will make you wonder if all of the good work the victim is doing in the pharmaceuticals industry might not be an attempt to offset some of his own bad karma.

This is a great opening book to a very promising series.

[Colin Melton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the story. I like how fast paced the story was especially because I'm a slow reader. I am currently on book 7 and I like the character development so far and the progression of explaining more of the magical elements. I will say that I felt the conclusion felt really rushed in this book. Could just be finding a groove kind of thing. Honestly book 6 (Whip Smart) has been my favorite so far. The biggest thing that will stop me from having any of these books be a 5 star is the editing. There are several spelling and grammatical errors that are just annoying. It's like the editor looked for the red and blue squiggly lines that did not read the story. This book I believe, had several instances of saying corner instead of coroner. So there is that and I have found issues like that in all six books that I have read so far. Still enjoyable fun reads though.

[Olivia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the plot well enough to try to read the second book, but the editor did a remarkably bad job to the point that the book was unreadable. It was like they just used spell-check, so nothing was spelled incorrectly, but there were so many words that had been “spell-checked” into an entirely different word that it was just painful to try to read (e.g. snugly is not the same as snuggly, palatable and palpable are entirely different words). You could tell what they meant, but any proofreader should’ve caught the errors. If you don’t know what a word means, don’t use it!

[Stephen Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uniquely brilliant

I wasn't sure where this book was going at first, once that was clear on was hooked, devouring this clever idea for the book with great pleasure. As number one in the series it leaves plenty of scope to flesh out the characters. The plot is clever with enough twists and new ideas to keep me absorbed . Great book onto volume two.

[Marcus Wofford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another spy/occult thriller

In the line of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of genre novels available from Amazon, this one of the Tom Clancy American variety. Not bad, well edited and written.

[Bill Pye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything works background and plot blended together

Lots of background for book one of a series. Somehow they keep the plot flowing without losing you in detail. All my questions answers the plot flowing

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I'm not quite sure about this series. It started a little slow for me got it interesting in the middle and then the ending was nothing special. I'm gonna try the 2nd book in the series before I give up.

[R Grisham-Whitehouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

dark but great story

I really enjoyed this book, it has an interesting plot and great characters. I think there is a little too much of the occult for my taste but the author does not glamorize it.

[Phil Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good

Interesting paranormal detective story. Character development is a little weak but the characters are Interesting. One of the characters reminds me of Linda Hunt.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun and inventive read!

Really enjoyed this book, and delighted to know there are 17 more to go! Woohoo!
Weird and inventive imagery with beginnings of new characters to explore.

[Sn8wflake · Rating 3 out of 5]

demon mage

I never made it through dresden files series and this has the same vibe. The story felt slow even though I knew it was progressing

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

my next series

I love a good series (like The Dresden Files, oh my!). So I just finished this excellent story and am looking forward to reading more about Wilson and Martinez.

[Katie Houghton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed every page of this book in a fan of supernatural the X files and Grimm and this doesn't disappoint going straight into the second book

[George Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel surprise.

[Lexi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting take on the supernatural and a government agency trying to handle supernatural cases. I really enjoyed the mystery of this book and how magic was used to solve it but also how the characters also had to use knowledge. This magic system was also very interesting in being centered around karma and how magic could bring you bad karma for using it. I really enjoyed the two main characters they worked well together and each brought something to the team along with the story. I am very curious to find out what other cases they will work on and how they will continue to learn more about the magic world. This case was very intriguing and I liked how the author tied it all together. There was some action which made it a lot of fun to read.

[Shelly Roke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magic has a coat

The premise off this book is that magic has existed all along,yet nobody knows why one person can use a magic spell and it works and it fails for someone else. The FBI and CIA have a combined covert group to investigate crimes by magic. They are based deep underground inside the Detroit salt mines on Zug Island. A new recruit has accepted a position and in an unusual circumstance, had already been put on a case. With an experienced agent, of course. Talk about baptism by fire! They investigate the strange deaths of five pharmaceutical company CEO's, and find the influence of Dionysus, among other things. Very interesting book.

[Pat Eroh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very well-written paranormal story that takes off immediately and continues at fast-paced throughout the book. I enjoyed the characters David and new recruit Teresa. I am looking forward to the next book in this series.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.