The Unusual Mayor Marheart by Tammie Painter

Bjørn reviews The Unusual Mayor Marheart, the fourth book in Tammie Painter‘s contemporary fantasy series, The Cassie Black Trilogy, that can be read separately.

Cassie Black is back, and she’s now heading up MagicLand’s newest detective agency.

Well, sort of.

See, she’s got a few problems, starting with getting kicked out of the Academy’s detective training program. Apparently, instructors don’t like being called Walrus Face. Who knew, right?

The upside is that it’s forced Cassie to start her own agency. The downside? A complete lack of clients.

Cassie thinks her career is on the upswing when Rosaria’s new mayor hires her to find a missing jewel. It’s a huge case that could turn the agency around. Trouble is, the jewel hasn’t been seen for well over 500 years, and Cassie suspects there’s more to the mayor’s sudden demands the jewel be found ASAP.

What’s more… something besides tea is brewing over at Magic HQ, but thanks to a little snag in the Magic bureaucracy, Cassie isn’t allowed to lend her skills to the problem. In fact, if she doesn’t sort out that bit of bureaucracy in the next few days, her sleuthing career will be over before it ever begins.

It all has Cassie looking wistfully back on the days when all she had to do was save the world.

If you like contemporary fantasy filled with wry humor, paranormal mystery, and diabolical office chairs, you’ll love the twists and turns of this start to an all-new trilogy featuring Cassie Black.

This is book four of the “hilarious” and highly recommended” Cassie Black Trilogy. Yes, “book four”, because trilogies refuse to be tamed! But, because it kicks off an all-new unputdownable, laugh-snort filled fight against evil, you can enjoy this new trilogy without having read Books 1 – 3. Books 5 & 6 will be out in late 2024.

“My dear friends and readers, updates on this heinous activity will come as soon as I have them. In the meantime, I beg you not to do business with this underhanded scoundrel.”

‘If You Buy This Record, Your Life Will Be Better’ by The Tamperer feat. Maya

The fourth book in The Cassie Black trilogy… yes, I mean, no, this was not a typo. It’s one of those trilogies that grow. You know the ones. Anyway, technically, it’s supposed to work as a standalone, and it probably does. There are so many just-vague-enough references to the previous books, though, that I accidentally ended up reading the first three as well, because I just felt I was missing out. (I was. This is an amazing marketing strategy. Write a standalone that actually does work as a standalone, except you have a non-buyer’s-remorse reading it. I recommend just buying all four.) So, um, I actually don’t know whether it works as a standalone, because I’m not some sort of a masochist who refuses to read three books that sound great.

Cassie is a lot like me, if I were magical and ate lots and lots of delicious stuff. And had a detective agency. And a tabloid hated me. And if I lived in MagicLand. And if I were a woman with a boyfriend called Alistair who makes the most awesome stuff. But apart from that, we’d totally not get along. We’re twinsies when it comes to filling the paperwork in time, looking totally professional, dealing with clients, and being gracious, even though my chair doesn’t actively hate me. And things that are totally not our fault. In other words, if you like your humour snarkastic, alternating between self-depreciating and self-appreciating, and, well, FUN – you will love The Unusual Mayor Marheart. 

Cassie also has this problem where she keeps nearly solving the cases and/or solving them, only to discover that it’s difficult to get to her clients to get their signatures, due to the clients being in contact all the time when she doesn’t have what they want yet, then unreachable once she does. We don’t share this problem, because the cases I mostly solve are The Mystery of Where Are My Keys and Phone, and I am my own client. (100% success rate so far!) The Mystery of Where My Sunglasses Went, however, would totally be Cassie’s to solve… if not for the fact that I would like to remain available once she does it. Because that unavailability has a reason.

There is reverse cheating at exams; a stiff-as-a-plank police inspector also known as Human Walrus, and a few other names he doesn’t appreciate; spells that are funny just because of what they’re called and what they do; FRED (FRED deserves all-caps and Cassie is very good at dealing with him, although her – briefly – manager disagrees); Pablo the cat, who is either very good at detecting stuff that is wrong, or just an asshole (possibly both, due to being a cat). The characters are fully fleshed, inspector Walr– Oberlin aside – some villains are too flat. Unlike the first trilogy, though, where the villain was unfortunately too easy to identify and as much as I hoped I was wrong, I wasn’t, The Unusual Mayor Marheart points towards one person so, so much that I am almost, but entirely, unlike convinced that’s how Cassie keeps finding herself in the tabloid on daily basis.

The author takes great pains to explain there may be inconsistencies between the first three and the fourth book in the trilogy. I’m slightly scatter-brained (Cassie nods in understanding) – this might be why I noticed none, and I binged that first trilogy before getting to book four. I’m a bit too old to be its audience, I suspect, but I’m 13 at heart, which with the age my ID insists on (thirty years and 201 months old) averages just right. The pacing is just right, I have a crush on Rafi (please don’t be evil), the bookworm librarian is exactly what I just said, and the queerness in the book is very… Sometimes I notice when someone forces queer characters into books for #diversity reasons. The Unusual Mayor Marheart does it effortlessly and elegantly, reminding me a bit of Olivia Atwater’s excellent Small Miracles. The queer characters just happen to be queer, this neither defines them nor is a tragedy of any sort. I love that.

Now, what are the book’s weaknesses? The main one is that it ends on a cliffhanger so painful that if I had known, I would have probably waited for books five and six. (The author hasn’t written them yet, which is rude.) Inspector Oberlin, as I mentioned, has no redeeming qualities to be found, making him less funny and more flat. The tabloid articles, I mean – opinions, are a bit (like a steam train filled with something very heavy and treated with a Heaviness Spell) on the nose. And Mayor Marheart herself is so, so suspicious – interestingly, she ran in the elections against Oberlin himself, so if she turns out to be a villain, that will have very interesting political undertone – that it feels weird not to see Cassie give it a second thought. Or a first.

The grammar can be a bit random. This applies to all the books in the trilogy. I am a fan of breaking the fourth wall, but sometimes the switching between past and present tense can be random – in the same paragraph sentence 1 will be in past tense, 2 – in present, 3 – in past tense again. This didn’t kick me out of the book, but never stopped being noticeable.

Um. I ran out of the weaknesses.

The magic is random. I think in fantasy this is called ‘soft magic’ – basically if a spell is necessary, Painter will create it. And it will always be funny. Cassie struggles with a lot, from her boyfriend’s diva-like behaviour, through telling gnomes called Rosencrantz and Wilderstern apart (I always have this problem), to being villainised by the tabloid. Oh, and naming her agency – apparently Black Magic Detective Agency is not a good idea? I’d totally hire them. Once I found out Black was her surname, that is.

What can I say? I’ve read an early ARC and while I liked it a lot, I didn’t love it. The final version got rid of all the problems I had. I hate gushing about books without being able to point weaknesses. The problem is that The Unusual Mayor Marheart doesn’t really have many. It’s not the best book I have read this year – defeating Jonathon Fairfax Must Be Destroyed is going to be a difficult task – but it’s another proof that after, frankly, middling 2023, 2024 is a great year for books.

Recommended to anyone who likes their books funny, not too complicated, MCs who have both ADHD and PTSD-caused (that first trilogy is deeper than it seems at the first glance) social issues, and doesn’t pay too much attention to things being realistic. And carbohydrates, lots and lots of them. Then more lots. The world is a shitty place. People are shitty, too. But Cassie is amazing, no matter what too many shitty people – this book could do with Nicety Spell sometimes – think, say, and do.

Now give me book five. Immediately. (No pressure.)