"In DOUBLETAKE, Rob Thurman conjures up one of the grittiest tales of the Leandros brothers yet. The dangers here come from unexpected directions, with multiple (and conflicting) treacheries threatening them from all sides... Recommended." -SF Revu"Touching and at times hilarious, yet intensely compelling, Thurman's story lines are among the darkest in urban fantasy... Any book by Thurman is worth the purchase, but the Cal Leandros series shines, each one better than the one before. DOUBLETAKE is the seventh in the series." -Fresh Fiction"[A] lightning-paced fusion of Lovecraftian world-building, caustic humor in the style of Harlan Ellison (A BOY AND HIS DOG), and enough gory pulp action to fill a couple of KILL BILL sequels." -FEARnet.comAbout the AuthorRob, short for Robyn (yes, he is really a she) Thurman lives in Indiana, land of rolling hills and cows, deer, and wild turkeys. Many, many turkeys. She is also the author of the Cal Leandros Series: Nightlife, Moonshine, Madhouse, and Deathwish; has a story in the anthology Wolfsbane and Mistletoe; and is the author of Trick of the Light, the first book in the Trickster series.Besides wild, ravenous turkeys, she has a dog (if you dont have a dog, how do you live?)one hundred pounds of Siberian husky. He looks like a wolf, has paws the size of a persons hand, ice blue eyes, teeth out of a Godzilla movies, and the ferocious habit of hiding under the kitchen table and peeing on himself when strangers come by. Fortunately, she has another dog that is a little more invested in keeping the food source alive. By the way, the dogs were adopted from shelters. They were fully grown, already housetrained, and grateful as hell. Think about it next time youre looking for a Rover or Fluffy. For updates, teasers, deleted scenes, and various other extras, visit Rob Thurman's website and her LiveJournal.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Chapter 1Black SheepFamily . . . it is a fucking bitch.Just like he was a bitch. I had seen himwallowing amongst the game, but never tasting of the herd. More perverse, he lived with prey, had been raised by prey, had been taught the ways of the world by prey when Id had to teach myself. Clawing myself along, I had chewed my way through knowledge as grimly as Id once chewed discarded putrid meat and bone. Everything Id earned, Id earned with blood, mine or someone elses. I had done what no one else could do.The castoff failure, but look at me now. Damn right, look at me. Look hard and look goodright before I gut you.Then there was him, the golden boy, yet look at what he had done.Naughty and bad, bad and naughty. But much worse: disobedient. Not what theyd expected of their one true success at all.I laughed at the irony of it.I laughed, but I hated him, hated him, hated him, hated him, hated him.Not for what hed done, but that hed been the one instead of me to do it.That was all right, though. That was fine and fucking dandy, as someone I used to know once said. Fine and fucking dandy, because I hated everyone anyway. The only difference was, I was related to this one . . . and that made the hate sweeter. Hate was all Id known. All I had ever been given and all I had ever had. I was created from it, molded by it, lived by it. Hate was like air, necessary to life. I wore my hate as a second skin and let it warm me when nothing else did.I saw him through binoculars where I lay atop a roof far enough away that he wouldnt know I was there. It was night, but I saw him clearly. Light was for the fearful herd; the night was for me. Not that it was ever truly dark in this immense mound of misbegotten roadkill waiting to happen.Yes, I saw him. He had black hair, pale skin, lightcolored eyes. Nothing like I was at all. That I didnt hate. That I likedI was better, purer, closer to the truth.It was all about the truth.The new truth.My truth.And he was part of that, whether he wanted to be or not.Family was a hateful bitch; it was. I had the hot poker scars of that burned into my flesh to prove it, but, scars or not, sometimes family was all you had worth playing with. Maybe he would see that. Maybe he would want to play too. I played rough. I played to win.Did he?Id bet he did if given the chance, not that this boring scuffle I was watching was anything to go by. It wasnt a fraction of the challenge Id give him.The Unmaker of the World, they had called him.Unimpressed, I waggled black gloved fingers in a mocking wave. Wed see. Sooner or later, wed see exactly what family and blood meant to him. He might look like one of the cattle, but he would never be one.Besides, if he could unmake the world, how much more fun would it be for me to remake it instead?Chapter 2Family . . . it is a bitch.The thought came out of nowhere.Or maybe not, considering my current situation. There was no denying that it was true. Everyone thought it sooner or later, didnt they? If theres only you, youre goodlonely maybe, but good. You cant fight with yourself. If therere two of you, it can still be good. Your options are limited. You make do and appreciate what you have, unless its the stereotypical eviltwin scenario. Then you aim for the goatee and blow his ass back to the alternate dimension he popped out of.A kishibetter known as my paycheck in the form of a supernatural hyenahit my back with staggering force. I flipped it over my shoulder and put a bullet between its eyes.Yeah, normally two was a doable number for family. It was when you hit three and higher that things started to go bad. That was when the bitching and moaning started, the pitting of one against another, the slights that no one forgot. No one could tell me that Noah didnt pitch a few of his relatives kicking and screaming off the Ark long before the floodwaters receded. It was no familialLove Boat, and I believed that to my core.Which brought up the question: Did that wrathful Old Testament God kill the sharks? I dont think he did. You cant drown a shark. I think they were snacking on biblical inlaws right and left. Noah, Noah, Noah . . .I swung around and kicked the next kishi in the stomach as I slammed another clip home before putting three in its gaping, lethally fanged mouth as it jumped again. It sounded easy, but considering the one I also had attached to my other leg . . . it was a pain in the ass.Familywise, I had no pain in the asses. I was lucky. I had one brother and he was a damn good one. Once we were on our own, Id escaped the curse of screaming Thanksgiving dinners. . . . I had a turkey pizza; Niko had a vegan one. No bitter arguments around a Christmas tree . . . Niko gave me a new gun; I gave him a new sword. Absent was the awkward discovery of first cousins shacking up at the summer vacation gettogethers at the lake. I didnt have to wait for summer. I saw my brother every day when he winged my sopping towel off the bathroom floor at my head or I askedafter the factif I could use his priceless seventeenthcentury copy of some boring book no one but him and the author had read to prop up a wobbling coffee table.Summer vacations . . . if you thought about it, what kind of people actually gathered together at a lake with cabins and all that crap anyway? Hadnt they ever watched Friday the 13th? Jason? Hockey masks? Machetes? A good time for me, yeahoh hell, yeahbut not as much for the members of your average Priusdriving middle class.Stupidity is everywhere.But for me, right now, things were good. My brother and I kicked supernatural ass for fun and profit. I had a shirt that said that with our phone number. Humans wouldnt take it seriously. Humans didnt know what the world really hosted. But the kind that hired usnonhumanthey knew a walking billboard when they saw it. Running your own business is a bitch. You have to advertise. Promo. Market. Niko did that. I couldnt be bothered with that crapunless it resulted in my offensive Tshirt slogan. He and I had been doing this for four years now. Before that wed done the same, but it had been a hobby, not a career.Okay, I say hobby, but it was selfdefense, pure and simple. When youre half human and half of the worst monster to walk the eartha creature that ate the supernatural for appetizers without putting hardly any effort into ityou werent popular with the other monster types. And there were thousands of different kinds. Some immediately attacked me, sensing the half human in me and assuming it would make me weakerthey were wrong. Some ranthey were smart. And some didnt care either waywe hung out and had a beer.Good family. Interesting and wellpaying career. Half monster . . . well, everything couldnt be perfect, but otherwise right now things were good. I was hoping they stayed that way. Except for Niko. I didnt have to hope when it came to family.The rest of my life might be challenging in some other areas, like at the moment as an adolescent kishi was either trying to eat my leg or hump it to the bare bone, but family? I knew I had that under control. I watched my brothers back; he watched mine. We were a Hallmark card dipped in blood and made of unbreakable steel. Id never had a doubt about my family and I never wouldno matter what the kishi, who had brought the topic to mind to begin with, were doing to annoy me on the general subject.No, it was all smooth sailing, rather like this current job, until my cell phone rang. Niko, I said, shooting another adult kishi with jaws stretched wide enough to swallow my entire head. It had leaped downward at me from a fire escape of a condemned tenement apartment building long crumbled in on itselfno demolition crew needed. Gravity worked for free. Can you get this one off of my leg before I need sexual assault counseling?Niko said to not kill the babies, although at one hundred and fifty pounds baby was pushing the definition, but I was doing my best, more or less, to be a good boy. Although it wouldve been much easier to be a bad boy.So very bad. So very fun.For my brother, however, I reined in that part of methat nonhuman half of me, chokechaining it with a practiced grip. It was the price I paid to keep my brother satisfied. Bearing in mind that if it werent for him Id be dead or sanitychallenged ten times over, I owed the man. I was also fond enough of his bossy, analretentive ass to die for him.More important, to kill for him.And to have chosen the darkest of roads to make that happen.All that made ignoring a giant baby with an equally giant bite easy enough. As I fished for my cell, Niko was less than awed at my babysitting skills and said so: If you cant do a minimum of three tasks at once, I have failed you with all my training and instruction. Id blame myself, but clearly its entirely your fault, your laziness, your total ineptitude.Not that we shared the fraternal fondness out loud. How manly would that be?It wasnt as if I hadnt heard that all before. If adults heard lullabies when they slept, that would be mine. I shook my leg again, shot another kishi bounding down the side of the next building, equally as dilapidated as the first, putting three bullets between its blazing silver eyes. They shone brighter than any streetlights in this part of town . . . until their life seeped away and left only the dull gray of death. I felt bad for themalmostbut they had turned a block that had once hosted scavenging homeless, thriving drug dealers, and sullen hookers into a desolate wasteland. In my opinion, I didnt have a preference for one over the other, kishi or human. The mayor wanted the city cleaned up. The kishi clan was doing the job one block at a time . . . even if it meant eating quite a few people.Were those people good people? If I knew anything, I knew that these days, starting four months ago, I wasnt in the position to make the call on whether certain people were worth saving or leaving to the predators. That I left up to Nik. I simply stepped over their bodies and went on with the job.Regardless of whether they were good or evil, those people belonged, whether they knew it or not, to the Kin. The Kin, the werewolf Mafia of NYC, werent pleased to be sharing their money or their snacks with Johnnycomelately supernatural hyenas from the depths of . . . um . . . I shouldve paid attention to where those depths were during the premission rundownmaybe Africa, but Niko knew. That was enough. I didnt think it mattered much. They were encroaching on Kin territory, and the Wolves didnt like that.Unfortunately for the Kin, the kishi, as a race, howled at a decibel level that would have any Kin Wolfs ears bleeding ten blocks away. Curled up in homicidal furry balls, moaning for their mommies, they hadnt had much success in taking down the kishi. Luckily for Niko, me, and our bank account, human ears couldnt hear notes that high.And although I wasnt entirely human, my hearing was. That made us the goto guys for this job. It had seemed easy from the hiring and the half our fee slapped into my palmif it hadnt been for Nikos research, finding out the kishi were highly intelligent preternatural hyenas, if extremely malevolent. That meant the adults were fair game, but the younger kishi we had to pat on the head and find a goddamn supernatural foster and rescue organization for murderous fur babies to raise them right, socialize their asses, put rhinestone collars on them, and take them off our hands.How many of those do you think were in the phone book? Nada? Good fucking call.But the bottom line was, it was all about family, which had to be where that thought had originated. The adult kishi taking down prey for their young, which luckily was only one at this point, feeding him or her, setting up a nest, claiming this place for their own. They were doing what evolution had bred in them to do. Evolution worked the same for nonhumans as for humans. Kishi were predators to their bones. They would slaughter anything they thought they had a chance of bringing down, but to give them credit, they looked after their family.Thats where family became a bitch in yet another way. You eat people for your family, you piss off the Kin for your family, you die for your family.As a random bully had once said to me when I was a kid in the fourth grade as he demanded my sneakers and backpack, life isnt fair. I agreed with him by punching his annoying teeth down his equally annoying throat. If thats the way the world wanted to be, Id go along. I didnt make the rules. I only played by them.Since when?Since never.This wasnt a schizophrenic voice; at least, I hoped not. This was just my subconscious, my new subconscious. Since Id let a small piece of me wither and die months ago to save my family, the swamp in my mind that made up the subliminal me was considerably more shadowed. It was more prone to the bad thoughts people think, normal people too, that they shouldnt, dont like to admit to, and dont act on. But as I wasnt normal and wasnt exactly the Websters dictionary definition of a person, my bad thoughts were much badder than most and I wanted to act on them. Sometimes or often or frequently or very frequently, depending on my mood . . . no judgment needed or wanted. If I thought it, I absolutely wanted to do it.But I didnt.The voices/thoughts were almost as much a bitch as family could be, the squabbling, but Id learned to mostly tune them out. Many psychotherapists would be proud of my progressthe ones who hadnt met me and, if they had any sense, wouldnt care to.I wasnt good or bad. I was only me, and I was neither.Theyd have to invent a new bizarrely long German psychological description for what I was. How did the German say, To see him is to piss your pants in fear? Freud wouldve known.I shook my leg futilely one more time and exhaled in irritation at the molten mercury eyes, the dark red coat dappled with silver spots, the milk teethas large as a German shepherds adult teeththat continued to gnaw at my thigh. Three seconds and hes a rug under the coffee table. Your move, Cyrano.Did Niko have a proud, hawklike nose? Yes, he did. Did I give him hell over it? What do you think?I answered my still ringing cell phone as I shot the last kishi that leaped through a boardedup window. Wood split, glass shattered, and bone splintered. The combination made for one dead kishi whose stomach was rounded and full with its last meal, which, I was guessing, had been the last occupant of this street. From the hypodermic the parahyena coughed up in its dying throes, that meal had most likely been a tweaker.They say drugs kill, but does anyone ever listen?Yeah, Leandros, I said into the phone. Death and destruction by the dollar. The meters ticking. Go.I hadnt had a chance to check the incoming number, not with Kishi Junior both seducing and making a meal of my leg. But it didnt surprise me to hear a familiar voice. Five people total had my personal number. Our business number was an untraceable phone with voice mail lying on the floor of an otherwise empty storage locker. Niko and Id been sorry beforewe went with safe now. Kid, thank Bacchus. I heard the relieved exhalation. I need you and Niko at my place now.The three seconds was up, and I had the muzzle of my Desert Eagle planted between toddler kishis moon eyes as it gnawed harder at my lower thigh. I had a high pain toleranceyou learned to in this businessbut to balance it out, my tolerance for nearly everything else remotely irritable in the universe was low.Damn low. Contaminating part of your soul will do that . . . if you believed in souls. I hadnt made up my mind, but either way it was too bad for baby. It was nightnight time. I might as well stop the pattern now. The same as its parents, it would grow up to be a killer anyway.Like you did?As if I didnt know that.But I was a done deal; the kishi wasnt, not quite yet. Goodfellow? You in trouble? I started to put pressure on the trigger and tried to overlook the shadow of guilt. It was a kid. A killer kid, but a kid. Couldnt I relate? On every single level? Then again, did I care if I could relate? Was I Dr. Phil? Hell, no. I was, however, Nikos brother. That had me yanking harder at my internal leash while frowning crossly at Niko as I gave him a few extra seconds to move over and slide his katana blade between my leg and the kishi to pry it off with one efficient move.You owe me, I grumbled at him.While it squealed, barked, yowled, and laughed hyenacrazy through a toothy muzzle, Niko threw the last kishi down and hogtied its preteen fuzzy ass. My brotherhe wasnt a bleeding heart. There were more dead monsters and people in whatever version of hell you wanted to believe in whod testify to that. He did like to give a break when he thought one was due, thoughor when he thought their birthright shouldnt automatically condemn them.Hed learned that raising me and adjusting to my birthrighta lifetime of habits, right or wrong, was hard to break.Robins voice was in my ear, catching my attention again. Am I in trouble? Ah. Hmmm. Its more like everyone else is in trouble with the exception of myself, he hedged. Id rather explain it in person and give you the keys to the bar. Ishiah left them for you.Ishiah was my boss at my day job/night job/afternoon job, whenever I wasnt out doing what pulled in the real rent moneydisposing of monster ass. He owned a nonhuman barnot that humans knew the supernatural existedcalled the Ninth Circle, was a peri, which was a winged humanish type creature that had spawned angel legends, and was generally neutral on whether he should kill me or crown me employee of the month for making it a week without icing a customer while serving up their liquor of choice.Why would he want to kill me? We had a lot of unpaid tabs because I hadnt once made that said employee of the month. But hand held to the empty, godless space that filled the sky, if I killed you, you usually had it coming. Or you just werent that quick. In my world, the two were practically the same.The keys? Why did he . . . Ah, hell with it. Well get the story when we get there. I looked down at Niko crouching on the street, rhythmically rubbing the kishis stomach. It crooned mournfully, my blood on its teeth, the silver of its eyes surrounded by the white of fear. Fuck me. I sighed. Before I let Goodfellow off the phone, I added, By the way, do you know anywhere we could drop off a baby kishi to be raised up all good with God? Religious, righteous, and true? Oh, and nonpeopleeating?Your imitation of a Southern drawl is pathetic, and yes, drop him off here. He rattled off an address. They take in strays all the time. But youd better do it in the next hour or theyll be gone.Gone where? I asked.Who knows? It doesnt matter. Theyll all be gone. Everyone. Now hurry the hell up. Im paying your bill this time. Im a puck, a trickster, and a usedcar salesman. Dont think I wont squeeze every penny out of Nikos wellshaped ass if you dont perform this job to perfection. His phone disconnected in my ear.Who was that?I grinned down at my brother. Robin is hiring us for a job, and Im thinking seriously about taking a dive in the fifth, because its your ass on the line if we screw up.Goodfellow will be a good client. He wouldnt cheat us. Hed cheat anyone elseman, woman, or child, but not us. Niko finished the knot on the rope and slitted his eyes at me. And let us leave my ass out of it. Why I claim you as my blood, I will never know.It wasnt true. I didnt know why he put up with me, but I took it on faith that Niko knew something that made me worth keeping around. Niko inherently knew extraordinary things that most others didnt know and wouldnt ever know. He was like that. Then again, very rarely, Niko screwed the hell up, wasnt the infallible older brotherbecause no one was infallible. No one. I hadnt kept count before, the times he was wrong, but if Id known what was headed our way, I mightve starting adding them up now.Number one was a little over sixty minutes away and headed for us like a freight train.Ticktock. what type of genres are there for books Doubletake (Cal Leandros)
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful. Weakest Book In The SeriesBy Wyatt KnightAs a hard-won fan of the series, this review is very difficult for me to write, as I didn't enjoy this book as much as the others.But as I am an aspiring writer myself, I've become a huge supporter of frank, constructive criticism. That said, I'll try to be as succinct as possible - and not too much of an insensitive jerk.I had two major problems with Doubletake.The first problem isn't with the bond between Cal and Niko, or their relationships with Robin or Promise - that remains pretty much the same. The problem is the story. The plot takes a lot of interesting turns in this book, and unfortunately a lot of them are fairly pointless. For instance, in one chapter, Robin hires Cal and Niko to work as bouncers while his entire race comes together to decide which of them will reproduce. You would think that a great gathering of the Pucks, the oldest and most devious race of tricksters on the planet, would play an important role in the story. Not so much. It pretty much just turns out to be a giant, disgusting orgy that goes on way too long and described with way too much detail. And after the important gathering/orgy is over with, that's it. Nothing. There's no intrigue - no pucks plotting against one another. No thousand-year-old grudges get settled. Nothing. We got a few tidbits about Robin's past, but nothing else.And that's just one example. I would expect to encounter things like that in well-written (but ultimately misguided) fan fiction, not from the real author!The second problem was the villain. Of course, as per usual, there is more than one bad guy for the brother's to tackle, but there is always a Big Bad. In this book, it's a man called Grimm. He's pretty much exactly like Caliban but in the all the worse ways. Kind of like Professor Moriarty - all of Sherlock Holmes' abilities, with none of his morality.The very idea of Grimm makes my spine tingle with anticipation. Finally! Someone that can really challenge Caliban! None of that crap where Cal just makes a gate and boom - bad guy dead. Unfortunately, Grimm is pretty harmless. We get to hear about all the people's he's killed and eaten and whatnot, but we don't really get to see it. I'm sure all of the horrid experiences he describes are true, but talk is just that: talk. I want action. Show me that he's a bad mofo - don't just tell me. Add that to the fact that because his master plan for world domination relies partly on Caliban's participation, thereby keeping him from causing any serious harm to Cal or his friends....like I said, harmless. Virtually every scene they share together is him making big threats and then being unable to follow up on them while Cal kicks his butt at every opportunity. You can't bring Moriarty into the story and then tell him he has to follow certain rules.That's pretty much where my complaints end. There are some other annoyances, one of them being TOLD about a semi-important character's demise at the hands of Grimm. And Delilah's absence.All in all, I'd say I am not mad that I read it, but I'm certainly not satisfied either. There was a lot I could have done without *cough* orgy *cough*, and there was even more I really wanted to see but didn't. If you're a fan of the series, there are a few important plot developments you'll want to be aware of in Doubletake, and plus it's always fun to listen to Cal, Niko, and Robin joke and banter with each other while facing certain death. And also, we get an extremely small hint of another romantic candidate for Cal - God knows he needs one.If you're new to the series, don't start with this book. Ideally, you would start with Nightlife, the first book in the Cal Leandros series, but if you're on the fence about it, I'd recommend starting with Blackout first. It's the strongest book in the series to date. You know...in my opinion.9 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Good but not greatBy C. MooreOther reviewers have given a good overview of the storyline so I won't repeat that here. Learned more about Cal and Niko's childhood and there was definite character growth for Cal in this book. What I have some issues with, though, is I found a lot of repetitive material in the story and I didn't much care for the description of activities at the Puck reunion and felt the Grimm internal dialogue was too lengthy and also seemed to say the same thing over and over. The overall story was excellent but felt the book needed some additional editing as the story seemed to really bog down at times. This is the first Rob Thurman book that had these problems so hope the next one is back to her usual level of excellence.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Great story and writing, implausible and impossible villain.By IanSo far this is my least favorite story in the series. The problem is not the action, tons, the writing, excellent, but rather the redundancy of villains and recycled plot line, plus the immensely gaping plot holes. There are spoilers below this point, just a warning.It seems the author regrets doing away with her main villains, the Auphe, and decides Auphe v.2 is the only fix. So having the evil doppelganger of Cal escape lifelong tortured captivity, go to school to become as smart as Niko, travel about the country learning from and killing many teachers (including Cal's lost love), establish a huge underground lair, capture fifty brood mare succubae, breed over a thousand super-Auphe, somehow single-handedly supply food and necessities to said lair/population, all while keeping a close eye on Cal and learning all of he and his associates weaknesses, all in twelve years, is a wee stretch on immersion in the narrative.For a series that makes a point of repeatedly saying there is no such thing as magic, this activity is impossible without some serious hocus pocus. I would get caught up in the action and plot twists, only to be jarred out of it by the timeline and impossibilities of the accomplishments of the big villain. I understand he had to be pretty bad-arse to one up all of the past ones in the series, but come on. Don't claim to be plausible and then throw more and more evil successes onto a bad guy that is portrayed most often as a lurker and introspective devil than a guy who would be spending 28 hours a day hauling food and supplies to his lair. Not to mention where does he find the time to continuously rape his brood mares to make the Bae?At least make my fantasy reading follow some kind of rules.