A Queer Trade is set in the same time period as A Case of Possession.
Crispin Trederloe is having a bad week. Returning to London after visiting his ill mother, he learns that his mentor, Mr. Marleigh, was a dangerous warlock and is now dead. Marleigh’s possessions have already been sold or marked for auction, and this includes his boxes and boxes of research.
Marleigh and Crispin practice blood magic, which is both extremely dangerous, unpredictable, and explicitly forbidden by England’s magical overseers. At fifteen, Crispin was coerced by Marleigh to amputate the tip of Crispin’s pinky finger so that he could use the bone as the nib in the pen they use to write spells in blood. Now, Crispin must face the trauma of losing his mentor – who was also his father figure – while recovering all of Marleigh’s blood script spells before they can harm anyone.
This mission leads him to Ned, a local buyer and seller of paper, otherwise known as a waste man. Ned buys and sells papers for use in food packaging, among other things. Ned is a free black man living in London and running his own business out of the back of a bottle shop. When Crispin shows up begging him if he sold any of the papers he acquired after Marleigh’s passing, Ned is skeptical. However, he is smitten with the small, neurotic magician and agrees to help him recover his mentor’s papers.
I read The Charm of Magpies Sequence a couple of years ago and liked it well enough to pick up this spinoff. I read Slippery Creatures not long after, and decided that the world building in the Magpies series was probably my favorite thing about it as the non-magical Creatures didn’t really do anything for me.
Also, having a magician cast spells via the act of writing in blood is fascinating and way more interesting than the standard magician battle sequence of throwing the magical equivalent of fire bolts across a room at one another.
While the Magpies protagonists are jaded and jagged, Crispin and Ned are just plain sweet. Their relationship reminded me of those portrayed in books by another one of my favorite authors, Cat Sebastian.
Rag & Bone takes place in the same time period as Flight of Magpies. After the events of A Queer Trade, Crispin is forced to work with the magic justiciary and learn to use his magical abilities without his pen. Crispin is terrified that if he cannot prove that he is capable of non-blood magic, the justiciary will imprison or kill him. The harder he tries to undo what Marleigh taught him, the worse his lessons go. Ned hates that Crispin is so stressed and devoured by self-doubt. When Ned’s neighbor is murdered by magic, Crispin uses blood magic to save Ned’s shop. However, this opens a rift between the two men as Ned knows that every time Crispin uses his pen to perform magic, it physically harms him and shows the justiciary that he cannot be trusted.
This book has far more action than the first one. Crispin and Ned have tough questions to deal with as they consider what a future together might look like. Crispin believes his only value is through his magic, and doesn’t want to have to choose between it and Ned.
I actually read this book first and then went back and read A Queer Trade. Despite reading these novellas out of sequence, I’m glad I read Rag & Bone first as it had far more happening in it plot-wise than A Queer Trade.
If you like cozy, mid-stakes, magical murder mysteries set in late 19th century London, I recommend both of these books.