"Something From the Nightside" is a 2003 novel by British fantasy novelist Simon R. Green, and is in the genre "urban fantasy", and in the subgenre of "hardboiled urban fantasy". It is, in basic terms, a British version of Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files", a link made clearer since Jim Butcher has a blurb on the cover. This book was apparently the first in a series of a dozen books, which themselves are only a small part of Green's output. Since this book is the first in the series, quite a bit of it is used to introduce the characters and setting.
The book begins with our hero/protagonist, a man with the surprisingly prosaic name of John Taylor, sitting in his office. John Taylor is a private eye who is down on his luck and has his bills piling up, so when a client walks in with a case and a lot of money, he jumps at the chance. This opening, of the hard luck private eye, has gone beyond cliche and parody to just being a formal sign the author is giving us of what type of story we should expect. There is a twist, here, though: John Taylor's investigative skills are paranormal, and he comes from "The Nightside", a few square miles of London where it is always night and where the paranormal, in all its frightening forms, easily exists. Taylor left the Nightside, over a matter that is hinted at, but not revealed, throughout the book. His client is a successful businesswoman with a runaway teen daughter, and Taylor takes her case because he needs the money and because, of course, he underneath his tough exterior lies a heart of gold. But to take his case, the two of them must go to The Nightside, a place that Taylor left five years ago. The book explores the setting of the Nightside, hints at Taylor's origins, and also wraps up, after a couple of twists, the mystery that he was hired to solve.
The blurb on the cover by Jim Butcher probably describes it best:
"A fast, fun little roller coaster of a story"
This book is a little over 200 pages, and I read it in one day, more or less in one sitting. It is fast moving, and is approachable, but has just enough twists and depths to keep me reading. But a problem arises here. It is, after all,
Halloween Month, and while I was reading it, I was wondering whether "
urban fantasy", as a genre, was a type of horror. It certainly fits in many ways, since a genre that involves evil supernatural creatures would seem to be, by definition,
horror. But often, in urban fantasy, our supernatural evil creatures are such a normal part of life that one of the key elements of horror is missing. If vampires are an irruption of the inexplicable into our world, they are horrific. If they are just a fact of life, if there are vampire bars and a vampire affairs council, they are something else. And thus, we reach the problem with urban fantasy and with this book: the conventions of the genre are so established by this point, that not much horrifying and surreal can get in. This book had a few places where I was getting genuinely creeped out, but it cut them short to move the plot along. I still liked this book for what it was--- a fast, fun roller coaster--- but I also wonder where it could have gone, if the more weird concepts could hae been explored outside of the constraints of an adventure story.