It is my contention that, to find quality fiction, one of the most successful courses is to seek out genre-bending novels. These are stories which either mash two genres together, or which do not easily conform to a single genre. Why is this true? Simple. This is where you will find authors who are unwilling to follow in the tired footsteps of those who came before them, authors who aspire to do and say more than can be done and said by yet another iteration within an established genre. These authors will fumble and misstep like the rest of us -- they are human after all --, but their willingness to venture forth into relatively uncharted territory ensures that, for the reader, the ride will be new and exciting. Mr. Bledsoe did not himself come up with the re-imagining of the noir detective story in a fantasy-fiction setting, but it is a young and fertile field in which The Sword-edged Blonde is a worthy contributer.
If one transported the 1930s noir detective into a kingdom of swords and sorcery, then Eddie Lacrosse would be the result, a world-weary, ex-mercenary swordsman whose eye for a good woman is about as poor as his ability to avoid trouble. Lacrosse is what passes for a private investigator in his corrupted monarchy, working out of the upstairs floor of a tavern managed by one of his many mysterious friends. He works hard at his mostly thankless craft while trying to forget an event in his past which has left upon him a deep scar. But when Philip, a childhood friend and now king of a neighboring realm, asks for Lacrosse's aid in exonerating Philip's queen of a grievous crime, Lacrosse is unceremoniously dumped into his dark past, revisiting it even while he sets out to clear a wronged queen's sullied name.
Mysteries depend upon their plots and their characters to win the day and in neither case does Mr. Bledsoe let us down. The former is suitably twisted in knots, introducing us into a world of hard lives and even harder gods and with very little justice to be found anywhere. The latter are lead by Lacrosse, a charming rogue with a heart blackened by time and loss. But he is not as irredeemable as he would have us believe, as evidenced by the strength of his ties to Philip which have the power to provoke him to right a wrong not of his making. The secondary players are just as strong. From the creatures inhabiting Lacrosse's home base at the tavern to Kathy, the messenger woman who travels with him for much of the book, they enliven a tale Lacrosse could not have carried on his own. Couple all this with a suitably dark conclusion and one has, in their hands, a tight, well-imagined story that is as charming in its unconventionality as it is disturbing in its darkness. Enjoyable. (3/5 Stars)
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