Island of Time

February 15, 2022
An anti-magic cop in an anti-magic country gets sucked into a plot pitting established magicians against insurgent magicians. Called to the scene of a fatal fire, recently widowed Interpol agent Jackson Burnett finds every indication that Bernard Bouchon, the wealthy head of a timepiece manufacturing firm, and his wife, who runs her own interior design company, have perished along with their two children. But the forensic evidence soon vanishes more or less before the variably observant eyes of Jackson and Luca Tami, the blind Talent who's been seconded from Brussels to help him. Luca, who can see a lot of things Jackson's eyes miss, tells him that their records of the deaths will disappear soon, along with their memories of the incident. Interpol's remit has changed quite a bit since the 21st century--it's now "tasked with policing magic and Talents, those gifted in the arcane arts"--so Jackson's an obvious candidate to investigate the case. Not so his friend Simeon Baehr, a straight-arrow detective from Geneva's serious crimes division. So Jackson asks his boss if he and Luca can be joined by Inspector Krys Duprey, an Egyptian Canadian Ethiopian Interpol prodigy who turns out to be another Talent herself, and they go up against the forces intent on taking down the seven Institutes of Magic. Switzerland has outlawed magic for 700 years, but such bans have merely driven the Institutes underground, not put them out of business, and veteran Bunn supplies scene after scene of otherworldly combat and conscientiously expository dialogue. Alert readers will quickly sort out the hierarchy that puts Acolytes below Talents, then Adepts, then Directors; others will be dragged along in bemusement. A wild ride clogged by a surfeit of explanations on the fly.

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