One Damn Thing After Another: Jak Barley, private inquisitor, hates cases involving damned creatures like vampires and zombies, but that’s just what he finds himself in the middle of.

Jak Barley Private Inquisitor and the case of One Damn Thing After Another

Buy at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Buy at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

REVIEW: One Damn Thing After Another

Jak Barley-Private Inquisitor and the Case of One Damned Thing After Another
Rogue Phoenix Press

Jo Ann Hakola, The Book Faerie

5 Stars out of 5

Jak calls himself a Private Inquisitor. That’s like a private eye in our day and age. His acquaintances call him the ferret. I don’t think that’s so bad. After all, he does ferret things out. But he hates it!

Mr. Ehl graciously sent me a copy of his book so I could read it for review. It’s been published, so you can get a copy now.

I’ve read this whole series and always enjoy reading the next one he’s conjured. His writing is fantastical, with creatures out of this world, and Jak just barely getting away from one crisis to another. The story keeps you glued to the pages, there are puns, jokes, and more in his stories. I enjoy seeing characters he’s met in the past come back to see Jak again. He needs all the help he can get.

He’s got a girlfriend. She’s the witch’s daughter and that’s dangerous for him. Lorenzo is around and Jak really needs his skills. Other characters from the past show up at the right times to keep Jak alive. What more could you want?

How about vampires who are trying to take over the world? Or wizard warriors fighting with witches? How about his girlfriend’s mother and father trying to kill each other? It’s all here and it’s a good read.

If you like fantasy and enjoy a good fight, you’ll love this series. I’ve enjoyed each book I’ve read and look forward to Jak’s next adventure. He just wants an easy life looking for missing persons or proving whose husband is errant but it’s not to be. Poor Jak…

Jo Ann Hakola

The Book Faerie

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Las Cruces, NM 88005

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EXCERPT: One Damn Thing After Another

A guard dressed in the dark blood red of the Shaynee clan was calling to us from the other side of the iron-barred gate. He wore a helmet that reached past his ears and with a T-shaped opening in front, as well as a mail tunic, which seemed like excessive wear for a private guard.

“We have a special delivery for this address,” said Lorenzo as he climbed down from the wagon. “I have the order right here.”

The guard suspiciously squinted at the parchment and then called to his sergeant. He probably could not read. The sergeant looked it over.

“I have no notice of a shipment today,” he said. “You will have to come back after I ask the captain.

“This be a special overnight delivery,” Lorenzo replied in a bored voice. “We aren’t delivering ham and biscuits from the local eatery. Our order parchment says it has to be delivered within twenty-four hours.”

“What be in it?” the sergeant said as he stood on tiptoes trying to see into the back of the wagon.

“Count Dracula.”

“What?”

“It says Count Dracula on our work order.”

The guard opened a small door within the larger gate and walked to the wagon while cautiously clutching his sword hilt. Our freight was a narrow wooden container the shape of a coffin, which it was.

“I know of no Count Dracula to be visiting the Shaynees,” said the sergeant as if it were the most normal thing for company to come calling in a coffin.

“Now sergeant,'” said Lorenzo in a confidential voice of one insider speaking to another, “we know we cannot open this in daylight.”

He looked us over. We wore no weapons. The sergeant must have decided the two of us harmless enough when considering the security at the mansion.

“Bring him in, then.”

He turned and motioned for the guards to open the gate. We climbed back on the wagon and urged the pair of horses into the enclosure. The sergeant ordered two guards to accompany us. The major two requirements for working picket at the Shaynee estate must have most been size and nastiness. All the guards so far looked like two humans had been shoved into one skin and they were fighting to get out.

“Do not stray from the lane,” snickered one of our chaperones. “There are fire drakes patrolling the grounds during the day and the Shaynees keep them half famished. Yah should ah seen what they did to the charwoman last week.”

A circle drive in front of the manor boasted a fountain. In the center was a bigger than life statue in white marble. It depicted a skeletal figure with a shrewish grimace and it bore an ancestral resemblance to Bidner Shaynee.

“There’s a certain majesty that runs in the family, don’t you think?” Lorenzo observed to no one in particular. “Look at that heroic vapid gaze and weak chin that speaks of years of intergenerational breeding that is so common among our illustrious and anemic royalty.”

The guards about us shifted nervously at any mention of the vampire family and one seemed relieved when it came time to hop from the wagon and run to the two massive doors where he rapped on a bronze doorknocker. The doors opened to reveal several more guards, these armed with crossbows. Behind them stood a doorman who would have topped seven feet if he had a neck. It looked like someone had chewed off his nose. The two nostril holes were surrounded by a crater of scar tissue.

The doorman belligerently pushed his way through the guards. “What have we here?”

“Count Dracula,” replied Lorenzo.

“Count Dracula?”

“That be on the shipping order.”

“Who be Count Dracula?

“Hey, I’m just the hauler. My job description doesn’t include socializing with my freight. Last week I had to ship Barnabas Collins and let me tell you that was no picnic.”

The Shaynee house servant walked to the back of the wagon and examined the coffin. “Bring it in.”

Lorenzo looked affronted. “Hey, we are teamsters, not common laborers. It be against guild rules for us to unload the cargo.”

The doorman gave a venomous look. “I said bring it in.”

“All right, all right, Lurch. Don’t get your nose bent out of shape. Oops, sorry about that.”

The guards around us froze with fearful looks upon what could be seen of their faces within the helmets. It was obvious they had never heard such backtalk to the freakishly mutilated servant. It be one thing to sass a regular doorman in a fashionable quarter of town such as Vanella’s Maxzerum, another to do it at the creepy domicile of the undead. I felt like smacking Lorenzo.

The doorman stood impatiently for a dozen heartbeats. “Then get on with it.”

We slid the casket out of the wagon and Lorenzo took the head while I took the foot of the coffin. We followed him into a cavernous room so dimly lit that I could barely make out any details. After several turns through an equally dark hallway the doorman ordered us to lower and open the coffin. I held my breath as a guard unlatched the lid and swung it open. I could feel sweat dribbling from my armpits.

ALSO BY DAN EHL

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BLURB: ANNOYING ASSASSINS

Jak Barley, Private Inquisitor, is tired of adventures and is ready to take on only hum-drum cases offering no drama–those of missing husbands, unfaithful spouses, or fat merchants paying well for outing thieving employees–anything not involving traveling, swords, or the darker magics.

Yet once again his otherworldy friend, Lorenzo Spasm, drags him into cases involving corrupt CIA (Clandestine Information Authority) agents, murderous bank robbers, nasty goblins, furious dragon chases, demonic foes, and going uncover at an elders’ RW (recreational wagon) park set atop a butte overlooking a harsh desert floor. To top it off, Jak finds himself the quarry of the Assassin’s Guild after an anonymous adversary takes out a whack contract on him.

Helping him get through this will be his intended, the beautiful witchling in training, Morgana.

REVIEW: ANNOYING ASSASSINS

JAK BARLEY PRIVATE INQUISITOR and the case of the Annoying Assassins

by Dan Ehl

Five Stars–

Reviewed by G. Lloyd Helm

I only gave this book five stars because there is no higher rating. I love Jak Barley! I have read some of his adventures before and am continually surprised by them. Ehl knows how to keep several stories going all at once and tied together seamlessly. He is funny and sharp and delightful. I would really like to know more about Jak Barley and Lorenzo who appears to be a human from our world who exists in Jak’s world and crosses back and forth between worlds by his own desire. I wonder personally if it is possible that Lorenzo is actually the creator of Barley’s world dropping in from time to time because it amuses him to see his creatures scramble to solve the mysteries he sets up.

In short the Jak Barley books are “whodunnits” set in a world of dragons and magic and dire poodles that is a slightly skewed  society where Philip Marlowe might have been comfortable.

I loved this book and would love to read more of Barley’s adventures.

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