jacey | Booklog 20/2025: Jodi Taylor: Bad Moon - Elizabeth Cage #4

I had this book as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) from the publisher via NetGalley and was very pleased to be able to take a peek before publication. I've read all the other Elizabeth Cage book (and every Jodi Taylor book I can get my hands on) so I was really looking forward to this - and it did not disappoint. Note for new readers, this in NOT the place to start. Go back and read White Silence, Dark Light and Long Shadows before tackling this one. Elizabeth Cage can read people's auras. She sees them as colours and can tell their mood and whether they are lying or not. No one can keep a secret from her. In White Silence, this led to a great deal of trouble via Doctor Sorensen in the wake of the sudden death of Elizabeth's husband, Ted. Incarcerated in Sorensen's clinic, Elizabeth met Michael Jones, a somewhat shady character with dark governmental connections. In the previous three books they saved each other (a lot), and as this fourth book opens Elizabeth is living a quiet life, which is exactly how she likes it - or does she? Things are changing. Something happened last Christmas that she can't quite remember, and on top of that she might have accepted a freeelance job from an unnamed government department that Jones seems very familiar with. And then she finds blood on her doorstep. Iblis and his mangy dog, Nigel turn up. Iblis speaks in eighteenth century cadences and likes to eat fish and chips, drink Elizabeth's beer and watch her TV. His partner, Melek, is something of an enigma and might or might not have powers, but certainly knows a lot more about Elizabeth than she's telling. Then Elizabeth gets a note, apparently in her own handwriting: 'I always send the serpent...' Elizabeth doesn't know what's going on which, apparently, is for her own good. Yeah, right. During the course of this book she finds out. Written in Jodi Taylor's quirky style this is a supernatural thriller. Expect danger, magic, revisiting the scenes of former adventures and - oh yes - a serpent. Something is trying to rise from the darkness under a bad moon. Highly recommended.