Unshapely Things (Connor Grey #1) by Mark Del Franco

Released: January 30, 2007
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 305
Publisher: Ace Books
ISBN-13: 978-0-441-01477-4

Mark Del Franco has been on my radar for a while but I never got around to picking up one of his books. I tried to find him in the library but, alas, his work was unavailable, so I finally buckled down and purchased the first book in his Connor Gray series, Unshapely Things.

Connor Grey is a crippled druid. He used to be a big-time investigator but now he lives on the fringes of fey society, in a part of Boston known as the Weird. In Unshapely Things, fairy prostitutes have been turning up dead in alleys with their hearts missing. Connor’s friend Murdock, a cop specializing in fey crimes, recruits him to help out.

I really enjoyed this book. The pages flew by and the resolution of the story was one I wasn’t expecting but found quite plausible. It’s also one of the few urban fantasies that I’ve enjoyed that’s written by a man. I’ve got nothing against male authors but I find that they sometimes don’t write female characters well. And since protagonists in urban fantasy seem to be overwhelmingly female, the books sometimes disappoint. But Del Franco does a fantastic job (no pun intended) with Connor Grey – he’s a flawed, interesting character with a unique voice. I look forward to Unquiet Dreams.