The Prisoner of Blackwood Castle
by Ron Goulart
1984 Avon Books
Reprinted Wildside 2015 in Harry Challenge: Victorian Supernatural Sleuth
Early steampunk which has Ron Goulart in his element. Set in 1897 Europe, Harry Challenge is a Pinkerton style detective who is hired to rescue a man believed held prisoner in a foreign castle. Along the way he faces lifelike automatons, a werewolf, and a vampire. Well, I say face.
What works here is Goulart's trademark humor. Very few books are laugh-out-loud funny, and he doesn't try for it here, but the humor works to give the book charm, which it has in spades. There are good guys galore: Challenge, his estranged love Princess Alicia, stage magician and genuine psychic the Great Lorenzo, spunky reporter Jennie, her rival reporter the braggart McMillion, and his foul-mouthed valet Tubbs.
What it's short on are bad guys and action. There are few quick sword fights that last a couple sentences each, but very little actually happens until the end of the book, and almost nothing even then.
