Strange Practice Review

This week's novel is Strange Practice, by Vivian Shaw.

Dr. Greta Helsing is one of the few doctors in London for supernatural patients.  When a cult of guys dressed like monks with glowing blue eyes and knives coated in everything that would make a monster cringe, start coming after Greta's patients, a rag tag band has to put a stop to it.

I really liked everything that had to do with Greta's medical practice.  I'm a sucker for stories about supernatural creatures with mundane needs that still require some specialization.  There's a gray guy with chronic bronchitis, and a ghoul who needs anti-depressants.  When she's at her practice one day it's mostly folks with the flu and one woman who needed birth control.  I am all about that.  Tell me more.

On the down side, there are just so many dudes in this story.  So many dudes.  A few female characters (three?  two?) other than Greta have speaking roles, but they're in the background or on the phone and are usually to show that someone is looking after Greta's practice while she's taking care of this cult nonsense.

The guys in the rag tag gang shift between Greta-father-figure and Gretta-love-interest and back.  It's weird.  And there are three dudes who are all filling that father-figure/love-interest niche.  Three.  (That's either as many non-Greta female speaking roles there are or more than the number of non-Greta speaking roles.  I can't remember.) One of these dudes I found insufferable.  One of them was only insufferable some of the time.

And don't get me started on the 50 pages of my life that happened between when I said, "You should ask the ghouls.  I bet they know everything," and when the ghouls stepped up and volunteered all the information because no one ever asked.  This overlaps with the 50 pages between where I said, "You should just cut the power," and when the ghouls said, "Did you know you can just cut the power?"

I wanted more ghoul babies with ear infections.  That was a definite high point.

***
Next week: Blood, Bones, & Butter, a cooking memoir by Gabrielle Hamilton.