Maggie for Hire

Crude as it is, this is a much better cover than my
Kindle edition had. This is how Maggie is actually
described in the book, all sass and biker leathers.
On the one I have she has massively 90s pop video
hair and a vest that looks like it was crudely beaten
from aluminium. Still, it's better than the one where
she's wearing stripper leathers and you can't even
see a full face.

Maggie McKay is a Tracker; basically a skip-tracer for the Otherworld. A child of both worlds, she is able to move with relative ease across the boundary between the mundane and the magical, find rogue vampires and ghouls, and bring them back to the Otherworld, dead or more dead. But then something goes awry and the vampires seem to be hunting a bounty on Maggie. Before long, she's got a contract to save the world, a long-lost uncle who might want her dead, and an unwanted new partner in the form an an irritating elf named Killian.

So, I admit, I read this book for two reasons: 1) I loved The Woodcutter, Danley's first novel, and 2) the Kindle edition was free. Maggie for Hire is, even more than The Woodcutter, part of a vast herd. It doesn't really distinguish itself in either direction, neither managing to be a standout success, nor yet more than ordinarily appalling. It's workmanlike, which may be pretty damning in and of itself, although the several favourite phrases textmarked in the Kindle edition suggest that it has at least a cult following.

I can understand how it might: Sassy hunter, gorgeous if lippy sidekick and a side-order of family angst; it's got everything a book of its ilk should have. As of book 1, however, Maggie McKay Magical Tracker doesn't really have much more than that (actually, that's not 100% fair; Pipistrelle the Brownie was kinda awesome.) It's a shame, because The Woodcutter felt like Danley had a lot more to say. On the other hand, I can not fault her industry. Maggie for Hire has four sequels, and Danley now has an even dozen books out in the past four years. I guess that's the kind of thing you have to do to make the bacon as an indie novelist, so maybe a little unevenness is inevitable.