{"id":14213,"date":"2019-11-09T14:59:15","date_gmt":"2019-11-09T19:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=14213"},"modified":"2019-11-09T14:59:15","modified_gmt":"2019-11-09T19:59:15","slug":"magic-for-liars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/11\/09\/magic-for-liars\/","title":{"rendered":"In Sarah Gailey’s ‘Magic for Liars,’ Investigating Murder At A School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Sarah Gailey\u2019s \u201cMagic for Liars\u201d<\/a> (Tor Books), a drunk, broke private detective gets hired to solve a murder at a version of Harry Potter\u2019s Hogwarts. A staffer at this high school of witchcraft and wizardry was found gruesomely split in half. The authorities rule it a suicide; case closed. But the school administrator calls in the private investigator to dig deeper.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the charming fairytale educational institution imagined by J.K. Rowling. This is a school roiling with pimply adolescent crises\u2014it\u2019s just that the bullying gets played out via bitter magic.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/a>
Sarah Gailey. (Courtesy Tor Books)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The detective, who has no magic herself, finds a web of high school crushes, teen pregnancy and petty grudges. The faculty is a mess too\u2014including a star teacher on the faculty who happens to be the detective\u2019s twin sister. They\u2019re long estranged, partly because the twin has used her magic to make herself more beautiful and successful, partly because when their mother was dying of cancer, the sister didn\u2019t use her magic to help. Magical folks say the mom\u2019s case was too far gone, too complicated, for magical intervention. But still.<\/p>\n

The plot drags, marinating for a long while in hard-boiled detective story clich\u00e9s without any twists, or really even leads. It\u2019s not until the end that the story gets a move on, but then, wow, it explodes like the dazzling finale of a fireworks show\u2014all confrontations and twists and revelations. One relationship after another combusts as long festering sibling rivalries reach breaking points.<\/p>\n

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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Sarah<\/a>
Sarah Gailey’s “Magic For Liars.” (Courtesy Tor Books)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Sarah Gailey\u2019s \u201cMagic for Liars\u201d (Tor Books), a drunk, broke private detective gets hired to solve a murder at a version of Harry Potter\u2019s Hogwarts. A staffer at this high school of witchcraft and wizardry was found gruesomely split in half. The authorities rule it a suicide; case closed. But the school administrator calls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[622],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14245,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14213\/revisions\/14245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}