A Supernatural Prison Break: Strange Ways by Gray Williams

This is another instalment set in the creepy universe created by Gray Williams in which magic is real, demons exist, and practitioners and summoners have mostly been co-opted by organised crime.

Due to the fact that a wave of uncharacteristic liberalism has led to the automatic death penalty usually applied to those practising magic being commuted, there are now also, of course, special magic-resistant jails created to hold such people, the Strange Ways to which the title of this book alludes (Strangeways being an actual category “A” prison in Manchester).

The main plot of this novel is therefore a prison break, an attempt by the daughter of an incarcerated practitioner to liberate her mother, using her supernatural gifts to create new-fangled black-market magic-based drugs that directly impact the emotional state of the users to generate funds. All her plans are, naturally, rent asunder.

The world portrayed is an extremely seedy and depressing version of the UK convincingly bought to life. The writing is visceral, and the narrative is full of twists and turns with some impressive plot developments along the way.

I will definitely continue to read the books in this series.