House Read: Carter & Lovecraft

What I’m Reading:  Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard
Published: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015
Cover Art: I need to check a hardcopy to find out
Read This: while dancing by the abyss.

Daniel Carter was a cop in New York who stumbled across a deeply strange case that resulted in his partner and the perpetrator dead and his dreams being haunted by the strangeness of it all.
Emily Lovecraft is the last direct descendant of H.P. Lovecraft and works in her uncle’s bookstore in Providence, RI. There’s no reason these two people should ever meet until a suspiciously high priced lawyer tells Carter that he has inherited said bookstore.
That’s fine and dandy. He doesn’t really need a bookstore, but it’s a nice piece of backup income to supplement his PI business. But then, he gets a call from a man who is afraid for his life. When Carter arrives in the parking lot to meet his new client he finds the police already there and the client dead in his car under impossible circumstances.
The more he looks into it the tighter he and Lovecraft are drawn into a strange web that seems to have come straight out of HPL’s books.

I listened to this one on audio and I’ve got to say, pick up the hardcopy instead. It’s not that the narrator is bad, but I really didn’t care for the way he voiced Lovecraft. It was just weirdly drawling. It just didn’t work for me.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I’m hoping it’s the start of a series rather than a standalone. I feel like the ending is a great setup for a second book, but a little unsatisfying if it’s just the end.
It was a little odd to read this so close to Maplecroft. I kept thinking about the way the scary things worked there and mixing them up with the events in this book. Also, Howard confirmed my suspicions about a certain type of grad student…