Thraxas by Martin Scott

Thraxas is a seedy private investigator with a penchant for excessive drinking and gambling debts that may kill him soon. Worse, he lacks clients. Until the day a princess asks for his help. Within a few days he still isn't the best-paid PI of Turai, but certainly the one in most demand. He has to solve the case(s) of a stolen magical treasure, a murdered dragon, diplomatic incidents with several foreign powers and drug-smuggling nobles. Add to that mess a gang war, one, no, several power hungry wizards, scheming politicians and an electoral battle, emancipating women and a madness curse and Thraxas has his hands full.

I grabbed this book without closer looking at it as a quick read for a longer trip by train. I wanted something entertaining to read and I got it with this book.

Martin Scott wrote with Thraxas an interesting and amusing yarn. He has an easygoing, humorous writing style that never slips down to silly. The style fits Martin Scott's handling of the story. It never feels deadly serious, but is anything but shallow. All the different subplots of Thraxas' investigation are interlinked and come together at the end. Even one point of the story I thought of as deux ex machina proved to be quite logical in the end.

Martin Scott doesn't waste pages with deep characterization. He sketches them with the necessary details and a twinkle in the eyes. They aren't bland. Thraxas is a our typical fantasy, well, anti-hero. Drinking, overweight, chronically broke and not very worried about that. But he is a good sleuth who has friends he can trust in times of need. The maybe closest is Makri, a fierce young warrior who works as waitress in Thraxas' favourite tavern during day and goes to nightschool afterwards to learn philosophy and other things when she isn't helping Thraxas with his investigation. She is really my favourite character in this book. She is so determined to reach her goals and make something out of her life and at the same time she appears still young and very human. (I think of the flowers.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book; I spent my time in the train in the best way I can imagine. As I said I had just grabbed the book. So only later I remembered to have heard the title mentioned. Thraxas is the first of Martin Scott's novels about this fantasy PI and the book has won the World Fantasy Award 1999 for the best novel and I have to say the award was well deserved. I absolutely recommend the book to any fantasy fan who wants to spend a few carefree hours.