Slippery Creatures by K.J. Charles

Narrated by Cornell Collins

Note: This story contains mention of chemical weapons and deadly disease.

I always enjoy it when an author sets out to deliberately write a pastiche or homage to a particular type of book. It’s something that goes beyond employing specific tropes; it’s as much to do with evoking the style of writing and the era in which the story is set as it is with whichever elements of storytelling are involved, and there are few authors who can do this sort of thing as well as K.J. Charles. Her Sins of the Cities series is a fantastic homage to the three-volume Victorian sensationalist novel, while The Henchmen of Zenda is an energetic (and marvellously tongue-in-cheek) retelling of a classic that not only conjures up the spirit of the original but adds several layers to the level of characterisation and plot. Her latest series – The Will Darling Adventures – is a trilogy set shortly after the First World War written in the style of 1920s pulp fiction, featuring rip-roaring adventure, dastardly plots and evil masterminds pitted against tough, heroic types who triumph against the odds.

One of our heroic types here is Will Darling, a former soldier who returns from war to find a world that has moved on without him. Unable to find work – as was the case for so many of those who survived the carnage of 1914-18 – Will is close to destitution when he is taken in by his uncle (his namesake) who is the owner of Darling’s Rare and Antiquarian bookshop in London. The plan is to train Will to eventually take over the business, but just a couple of months later, Darling senior is dead and has left Will in possession of the shop and flat above.

Saddened by his uncle’s death and still trying to get to grips with the shop – which is best described as organised chaos – Will is further confused when a man approaches him and demands he hand over The Information. Will says he has no idea what the man is talking about; the man doesn’t believe him and gets belligerent, and Will pointedly asks him to leave. He thinks no more of it until the early hours of the morning, when he’s woken up by the sounds of someone moving around in the shop. Will runs off the intruders and, strangely, can find nothing missing.

Already seriously annoyed, Will becomes even moreso when he receives a visit from a man who reeks of ‘officialdom’ and introduces himself as Captain Ingoldsby of the War Office. It seems he, too, is after the mysterious information, and Will is – not unsurprisingly – pissed off by the man’s high-handed attitude and tells him, in no uncertain terms, where to get off. He’s had just about enough when, in broad daylight, he’s attacked by a thug – one of the burglars, perhaps? – who is prevented from doing real damage when another customer enters the shop and provides the distraction Will needs to deliver a solid kick in the crotch to his assailant.

Said customer – tall, dark, handsome, charming – introduces himself as Kim Secretan and offers to buy Will a pint after he’s helped straighten things up a bit, and Will, who has had more than enough of being attacked, being alone and feeling as though he’s in over his head, takes him up on it. It’s been quite a while since he’s had someone to talk to, and something about Secretan’s quiet steadiness and intelligent questions inspires confidence, so Will finds himself telling him about the strange goings-on of the past few days. He knows his tale of threatening visits from unknown men and War Office officials and break-ins sounds fanciful, and is relieved when Kim not only takes him seriously, but offers to help.

That’s as far as I’m going with the plot. What I will say, however, is that it’s complex, clever and superbly put-together – not that I expected anything less! The two leads are like chalk-and-cheese, and equally compelling; Will a down-to-earth, much decorated soldier who is disillusioned with the world to which he’s returned, Kim an aristocrat – albeit a disgraced one owing to his Bolshevik sympathies and his perceived cowardice for not joining up – and a man accustomed to deception and manipulation to achieve his ends. There’s no doubt that Kim treats Will pretty badly on several occasions, lying to him outright and deliberately misleading him as to his (Kim’s) motives, but there’s nonetheless something about him that’s incredibly likeable. Will is stubborn to a fault, intelligent, tough and resourceful, and most definitely less morally ambiguous, but even as he starts to realise that Kim isn’t what he seems, he can’t help the strong pull of attraction he feels towards him. The relationship between Will and Kim is really well done; the author promises an HEA by the end of book three and I like a good slow-burn ;)

The other things I love about this author’s work – the wit and humour, the strong sense of time and place and excellently researched historical background – are all present and correct, and while the supporting cast isn’t huge, there are two wonderful ladies featured in this story – Will’s best friend Maisie Jones (a milliner) and Kim’s fiancée, Phoebe Stephens-Price, at first glance, the epitome of the Bright Young Thing, but who is really far more perceptive than she lets on.

Cornell Collins has narrated many of K.J. Charles’ books and done a great job with them, so I was looking forward to an enjoyable listening experience. It’s a strong performance overall – good pacing, differentiation and emotional nuance – but I did have a couple of large-ish niggles about the vocal characterisations of the two leads. First, Will comes from Northamptonshire, which is in the East Midlands, but the first time he speaks, it’s with a West Country accent. Mr. Collins does navigate further northward and eastward later on, but the West Country burr slips back in now and then. The biggest issue I had, though, was with his portrayal of Kim. Mr. Collins adopts a suitably upper-class cut glass accent for him, but he has also given him an almost nasally tone, which isn’t particularly appealing. Now, Kim is a lying, deceitful shit at times, and if the intention was to emphasise his unreliable nature, then it works. But the author does a really good job of conveying, through Will’s PoV, that there is more to Kim than meets the eye, and in audio, this could have been brought out even more and could have provided a greater sense of uncertainty for the listener by giving Kim a more attractive, ‘hero’-type voice. A lower-pitched, smoother tone would have provided a greater dichotomy in a ‘this guy sounds completely trustworthy, but his words say otherwise’ kind of way. Don’t get me wrong – he doesn’t sound like a horrible sleazebag; I just heard him differently in my head and thought it was a missed opportunity to create greater ambiguity.

Pretty much everything else about the narration works – the officials sound appropriately officious and the villains appropriately nasty – and in spite of those reservations, I did enjoy it overall.

Exciting, funny, sexy and utterly captivating, Slippery Creatures is an excellent beginning to what I’m sure is going to end up as one of my favourite series of this year. The plot is clever, the characters are engaging and I’m always here for a good slow-burn romance. I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

Caz