Available Dark: a novel

By Elizabeth Hand

Elizabeth Hand's writing honors include the Shirley Jackson Award, the James Tiptree Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and many others. Now, this uniquely gifted storyteller brings us a searing and iconoclastic crime novel, in which photographer Cass Neary, introduced in the underground classic Generation Loss, finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of crime in Scandinavia's coldest corners.
As this riveting tour-de-force opens, the police already want to talk to Cass about a mysterious death she was involved with previously, but before they can bring her in, Cass accepts a job offer from overseas and hops on a plane.
In Helsinki, she authenticates a series of disturbing but stunning images taken by a famous fashion photographer who has cut himself off from the violent Nordic music scene where he first made his reputation. Paid off by her shady employer, she buys a one-way ticket to Reykjavik, in search of a lover from her own dark past.
But when the fashion photographer's mutilated corpse is discovered back in Finland, Cass finds herself sucked into a vortex of ancient myth and betrayal, vengeance and serial murder, set against a bone-splintering soundtrack of black metal and the terrifying beauty of the sunless Icelandic wilderness. In Available Dark, the eagerly awaited sequel to the award-winning Generation Loss, Cass Neary finds her own worst fears confirmed: it's always darkest before it turns completely black.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Small Beer Press
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781618731913

Elizabeth Hand

Elizabeth Hand is the author of sixteen multiple-award-winning novels and six collections of short fiction. She is a longtime reviewer for numerous publications, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her noir novels featuring punk photographer Cass Neary have been compared to the work of Patricia Highsmith and optioned for a TV series. Hand teaches at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and, when not living under pandemic conditions, divides her time between the Maine coast and North London.

Book preview

9781618731906.jpg

ELIZABETH

HAND

AVAILABLE

DARK

Small Beer Press

Easthampton, MA

Also by Elizabeth Hand

The Best of Elizabeth Hand

Curious Toys

Fire

Wylding Hall

Errantry

Radiant Days

Illyria

Saffron and Brimstone

Mortal Love

Bibliomancy

Black Light

Glimmering

Last Summer at Mars Hill

Waking the Moon

Icarus Descending

Aestival Tide

Winterlong

Cass Neary Crime Novels

Generation Loss

Available Dark

Hard Light

The Book of Lamps & Banners

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Hand (elizabethhand.com). All rights reserved. First Small Beer Press trade paper edition 2021.

Camera Lucida: Reflections On Photography by Roland Barthes, translation by Richard Howard, translation copyright 1981 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

Small Beer Press

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Easthampton, MA 01027

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Distributed to the trade by Consortium.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hand, Elizabeth, author.

Title: Available dark / Elizabeth Hand.

Description: First Small Beer Press trade paper edition. | Easthampton, MA

: Small Beer Press, 2021. | Summary: "Cass Neary finds herself drawn

into the shadowy world of crime in Scandinavia's coldest corners"--

Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021026672 (print) | LCCN 2021026673 (ebook) | ISBN

9781618731906 (print) | ISBN 9781618731913 (ebook)

Classification: LCC PS3558.A4619 A93 2021 (print) | LCC PS3558.A4619

(ebook) | DDC 813/.54--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026672

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026673

Cover © 2021 by Small Beer Press.

Paper edition printed on 30% Recycled Paper by the Versa Press in East Peoria, IL.

For Russell Dunn, 1958–2011,

soul mate, true artist, and fellow traveler in Reykjavík,

with love always

All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.

—Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes,

translated by Richard Howard

Domine, libera nos a furore normannorum.

Lord, save us from the rage of the Norsemen.

—Medieval prayer

Part One

1

There had been more trouble, as usual. In November I’d headed north to an island off the coast of Maine, hoping to score an interview that might jump-­start the cold wreckage of my career as a photographer, dead for more than thirty years. Instead, I got sucked into some seriously bad shit. The upshot was that I was now back in the city, almost dead broke, with winter coming down and even fewer prospects than when I’d left weeks earlier. I dealt with this the way I usually did: I bought a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, cranked my stereo, and got hammered.

When I finally came to, it was dark. Sleet rattled against a greasy window. In a corner of the apartment, a red light flashed beside a stack of old LPs: I’d turned off my phone but forgotten the answering machine. I lurched toward the blinking light, unsure if it was early morning or night, yesterday or tomorrow.

Cass. What the hell did you do?

I rubbed my eyes, head throbbing.

. . . don’t know how you got that photo of my mother, but you better call me fast. Sheriff Stone wants to talk to you, also that guy Wheedler from—

I hit erase and skipped to the next caller.

This is a message for Cassandra Neary from Investigator Jonathan Wheedler of the Maine State—

I erased that one, too, and all the rest without listening to them, just for good mea­sure. Then I took a shower, waiting for ten minutes before the water pressure amped up to a scalding trickle. That’s what thirty-­odd years in a rent-­stabilized apartment on the Lower East Side will buy you. I dressed—moth-­eaten black sweater, ancient black jeans, steel-­toed Tony Lamas, the battered leather jacket I’d bought at Goodwill de­cades ago—­and went outside to forage for coffee.

It was night. Streetlamps gave off a smeared yellow glow. The financial meltdown hit my neighborhood hard—­not that I had any sympathy for the unemployed hedge-­fund assholes and fashion models who spent their afternoons whining into their iPhones in front of the Dries Van Noten store. Before the crash, this part of the city looked like a cross between a Downtown USA soundstage and the Short Hills Mall; instead of stepping over junkies, I maneuvered around rat-­size dogs in Juicy Couture sweaters and designer diapers. Now I wondered how bad things would have to get before Jack Russell terriers showed up on the menu at Terrine.

But I ­couldn’t afford to move. I’d been in the same place since the 1970s. The landlord had been trying to get rid of me for years; eviction notices had piled up in the weeks since I’d been gone, so I made a quick phone call to my father up in Kamensic Village.

Talk to Ken Wilburn, he said. He’ll take care of it for you. Are you back from Maine, Cass? Any more trouble with that? Come home, and let’s have dinner one night.

I said I’d think about it and hung up.

To­night I kept my head down against the sleet and wished I owned a warmer coat. I passed a line of anorexics waiting to get into a restaurant specializing in downtown comfort food: mashed heirloom potatoes, truffle macaroni and artisanal cheese. As I walked by, one of the skinny girls laughed. I stopped, pivoting so that my boot’s steel tip grazed her Bally Renovas.

Did you say something? Skeletor met my eyes and blanched. Didn’t think so, I said, and kept going.

Back in the day, my nickname had been Scary Neary. Most of the people who called me that are dead now. No direct causal relationship, just bad drugs and worse luck. I’m nearly six feet tall, all speed-­fused nerves and ragged dirty-­blond hair, with a fresh scar beside my right eye, souvenir of my trip to Vacationland: a walking ad for Just Say No.

I skipped Starbucks in favor of the all-­night Greek diner around the corner, found a booth in the back, ordered black coffee and a rib eye, rare. I was well into my steak when someone slid into the seat across from me.

Hey, hey, hey. Cassandra Android.

I winced. Phil Cohen, onetime rock journalist manqué, now the mastermind behind a celebrity blog called Early Death. Phil was a local bottom-­feeder, one or two steps above or below me on the social ladder, not that anyone was counting. He was also my most reliable source for speed.

I hadn’t seen him since I’d been back. From the way he looked, alarmingly bright-­eyed and bushy-­tailed, the downturn in the economy hadn’t hit his corner of Hoboken. Phil ­wasn’t a bridge-­and-­tunnel guy; more just a tunnel guy, especially when you factored in his ratlike ability to scrounge a living in the dark.

Phil. How’s it hanging?

Not bad, not bad. Hey, I saw your photo got picked up by The Smoking Gun. Nice work. How the hell’d you do that?

I pushed away my plate. Fuck off, Phil.

Phil looked wounded. I told that German editor to get in touch with you—­the lady from Stern? They pay good money; I figured you could use a taste.

You put her in touch with me?

Phil nodded. He was fidgeting so much he looked like a life-­size bobblehead. Yeah, sure, how’d you think? Good thing your old man’s a lawyer.

I glared at him and finished my coffee. Phil was the one who’d sent me to Maine; he’d lied about the interview he’d supposedly lined up, and lied about just about everything ­else, too. His connection turned out to be a photographer named Denny Ahearn, whose favorite subjects ­were decomposing bodies in trees. Long story short: Denny went overboard off the Maine coast and was now presumed dead. The story got some press but quickly ran out of steam since the killer was gone and the remains of only two victims had been recovered.

My own involvement in everything was a little shaky. I kept a low profile until I was safely back in New York, where an editor from the German tabloid weekly Stern had rung me a few days after my return.

I so admire your work, Cassandra. Her voice had risen slightly. Your photo book Dead Girls—­that was brilliant. I was a big Bowie fan then, you know? We’d give you an exclusive. . . .

She had been disappointed when I told her I didn’t have any photos of the serial killer or his victims. I’d been disappointed, too, when she named the figure they’d pay. Then I remembered the roll of film I’d shot on the island but hadn’t yet developed.

It had been a weak moment for me. Most of my moments are like that. Finally I said, You familiar with a photographer named Aphrodite Kamestos?

Aphrodite Kamestos? Of course. She’s very well known ­here. Helmut Newton admired her work. The editor hesitated. She just died, too, didn’t she?

I hadn’t told her I’d watched Aphrodite die, or that I’d lied to the cops about it so I could avoid a conviction for voluntary manslaughter. I did a quick mental rundown of where I could cadge a few hours in a borrowed darkroom so I could pro­cess the film without anyone ­else seeing the images. Yeah. I might have an image of her, kind of a memento mori. Like a death mask.

A death mask?

Sure, you know. Something taken right after she died.

The editor had moaned. Oh, that would be so great.

Now I stared across the table at Phil. Yeah, good thing my old man’s a lawyer. So, you got anything in that little black bag for me?

Phil’s eyes rolled back in his head like he was communing with the spirit world. Focalin.

I stuck my hand under the table so he could drop a Baggie into it.

You’ll like this, Cass. Nice and easy, timed-­release, no edge. And probably I shouldn’t say this, ’cause I’d hate to lose your business, but you could see your doctor, he’d give you a scrip. Then you could get your health insurance to pay for it. Some Zoloft ­wouldn’t kill you, either.

Phil. Do I look like I have fucking health insurance?

Good point. ­Here, you want this? He set a tiny glassine envelope on the table, then flicked it at me. It landed on my lap. Touchdown.

What is it?

Crystal meth. Very pure, Cass; ­we’re talking Pellegrino, Fiuggi, all that shit. No one ­else wants it these days, but this is the stuff. Guy who used to be in the refrigerant industry, he still cooks with Freon. He’s got a nice little stash of CHCs, but there ain’t no more where this came from. I’ll give you a deal on it, Cassie. As a Christmas present.

Christmas is over, Phil. But yeah, I’ll take it. I peeled off a few bills to cover my meal, handed him a couple more, then stood. Later.

He pulled my plate over and began to eat the rest of my steak. Yeah. Write if you get work.

I walked back to my apartment, taking care that my cowboy boots didn’t send me flying as I navigated the slush-­choked sidewalk. I’d taken the Stern payment and had the boots resoled, but they still ­weren’t shit in bad weather. The rest of the money had gone to cover unpaid bills, plus a small retainer set aside for Ken Wilburn so I could hang on to my place for another year or two.

And that was it. I’d already gotten fired from my longtime job at the Strand Bookstore, no great loss save for the five-­finger discount I’d exercised over the years, building up a small library of expensive photography books. Even that was a victim to changing times, as store security had amped up to TSA levels, with metal detectors and bag checks before you set a foot on the floor.

But being broke ­wasn’t really the worst thing. I’d spent most of my adult life as a burned-­out underachiever, working in the Strand’s stockroom, drifting from one bed to another. For a few years in my twenties I’d been able to trade on the flash success I’d had with Dead Girls, my first and only book of photographs. Everything since then had pretty much been aftermath.

Still, through it all I’d always had the Lower East Side and the shadowy image behind my ret­i­nas of what it had once been: that 3:00 a.m. wasteland I’d fallen in love with when I was eigh­teen, shattered syringes and blood on the lip of a broken bottle, guitars and drunken laughter echoing through an alley where kids nodded out while I shot their pictures. The way something was always moving at the corner of my eye; the way the city was always moving, morphing into something new and terrible and beautiful.

The terror I knew on a first-­name basis. On my twenty-­third birthday I was raped outside CBGB. The scars are so old, as the song goes, now part of a faded tattoo I got on my lower abdomen to hide the bloody scrawl left by a zip knife. But even so, I could still sometimes find the silver-­nitrate city inside the real one, if the light was right and I’d had enough to drink, scored enough amphetamine to make my heart keep pace with the strobe of my camera’s flash.

Now all that beauty was gone. I was too old and too broke to go looking for it elsewhere. I’d spent too much time alone, skating on alcohol and speed, not noticing the ice beneath me was rotten and the water killing cold.

The last person who said she loved me died on 9/11. I’d forgotten what she looked like. I was a burned-­out, aging punk with a dead gaze, a faded tattoo, and a raw red scar beside one eye. In Maine I’d spent more time with other people than I had in years, maybe de­cades. There’d been a few moments when I’d held my battered camera and felt the way I did long ago, when I first stood in a darkroom and watched another world bloom on the emulsion paper in my hands.

But that feeling was gone; that world. Since my return to New York, I’d begun to have night terrors, paroxysms of pure horror, where I would see a black figure above my bed, smiling as he reached for my throat, and woke to my own muffled screams, heart pounding like a fist inside my chest. I felt strung out, wasted in every sense of the word, terrified of sleep and almost as afraid to leave my squalid apartment. The edge where I’d lived for all these years was starting to look like a precipice. I figured it was a good time for a short visit with my father. I crashed for a few hours back in my apartment, woke, and swallowed a couple of Phil’s white tablets; then headed to Grand Central to catch the first train to Kamensic.

2

The sleet that had made the city a skating rink turned to heavy snow when the train left Valhalla. By the time we pulled into Kamensic, I could see cars sliding across the southbound lane of the Saw Mill, and the beacons of emergency vehicles flashing like Christmas lights in the distance.

My father was waiting for me at the station. I’d called him before I left the city; he’s an early riser, up before dawn even at the darkest time of year.

Hello, Cass. He dipped his head to graze my cheek in a kiss, zipped his old L.L.Bean parka, then headed toward the parking lot.

You didn’t have to pick me up. I told you I could walk.

Did you see it’s snowing? he asked, and we drove home.

Since the late 1960s my father has been the Kamensic Village magistrate, holding court on alternate Tuesdays and otherwise tending to a few old legal clients from his basement office in the ­house where I grew up.

The town had turned into a junk-­bond trader’s Disneyland since then. Most of the old colonial ­houses ­were now trophy second homes, or teardowns turned McMansions, empty save for the shriek of alarm systems set off by barking dogs, and a seasonal army of workers bused in from Stamford, wiry Latino men wielding lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and, this morning, snowblowers. Martha Stewart owned a $20-­million cottage outside town, where she’d spent the last few years trademarking the name Kamensic for a line of outdoor furniture that cost as much as a semester at a Baby Ivy.

I hated going back, though I was cheered to see the storm had knocked a giant oak onto the most recent addition to a neighbor’s ­house.

Their alarm was going all night, my father said as we pulled into the drive. I tried calling the own­ers in the city, but they won’t pick up their phone.

They’re getting a lot of snow inside their new addition.

My father smiled. He’s the only person in Kamensic who still mows his own lawn.

We ate breakfast, then read The New York Times. We didn’t talk all that much, but I was used to that. My mother died in a car crash when I was four, an accident that left her impaled on the steering wheel and me rigid and staring, wide-­eyed, when the police found the wreckage. Since then, my father’s basic rule of thumb has always been that as long as I didn’t get hauled in front of his court, he ­wouldn’t ask too many questions.

How was Maine? he asked.

Cold.

Did you stop in Freeport?

No.

He stood and gathered a pile of papers from the sideboard. I have a few things to take care of downstairs.

He started for the door to the basement, stopped, and turned. Oh, Cass—­this came for you. He pulled an envelope from the sheaf of papers and handed it to me. You’re not in default on your student loan, are you?

This was a joke. I’d dropped out of NYU in my freshman year, which was about the last time I’d received any mail at this address. I looked at the envelope, puzzled. When did it come?

Last week.

He went downstairs. I walked into the living room, eerily blue-­lit from the snow whirling outside, sat, and stared at the envelope. Thin, airmail-­weight paper, with my name and address written in black cursive ballpoint ink. Painstaking, almost ­childish handwriting, like someone trying to make a good impression. I felt the tiniest frisson, somewhere between dread and exultation.

I knew that writing—­or had known it, once.

But the memory was gone now. The oversize stamp showed a snow-­covered expanse with bands of green and violet rippling above it.

island 120

No return address. Who the hell did I know in Iceland?

Reviews for Available Dark

[seongeona · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I can't remember what I input, but whichbook.net suggested I would enjoy this. Since I am a fan of Scandinavian crime novels, and the intersection of Scandinavian metal with galdr is of great interest to me, I bought a copy. I was immediately captivated, and although much was quite implausible and the ending outrageously over-the-top, I loved it! I am so curious now as to how/why the author came to focus on this particular topic, and whether my suspicions about who a certain character was based on are correct, that I am off to look for any interviews or FAQ pages.

[randystafford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is, except in its villain, is a more satisfying novel than its predecessor, Generation Loss.There are more bodies, a trail of them across the northern lands of Finland and Iceland, as Cass Neary, leaving her New York City home before Maine law enforcement can question her more closely about events in the earlier novel, accepts a dodgy commission by a sinister Norwegian nightclub owner. He wants some “esoteric” photographic prints authenticated. They turn out to be beautifully composed crime scene photos, the secret, early art of a now famous fashion photographer.There’s more weirdness as Cass seems, as the novel progresses, to be more than just a “amoral speedfreak crankhead kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily-tattooed” photographer of the damaged, dead, and dying. She has a wyrd and a purpose.No American hippies here cooking up their homemade occultism in a Maine commune. The menace and mystery of the novel is both more ancient but also more modern as Hand shows Scandinavians trying, with murder, music, drugs, and desperation to come to grips with old and new chaos brought to their land by foreigners. In an Iceland reeling from the black swans of economic derivatives (though there are no scenes with the Viking Squad), Hand gives us bleak beauty (and a chance for Cass to put her practical knowledge of street drugs to good use).To top it off, Cass hears, for the first time in over thirty years, from her old boyfriend, Quinn. He was the center of numinous attraction for the teenaged Cass. The back story of her relationship with Quinn is one of the reasons I’d advise reading Generation Loss first though it’s not absolutely required.Definitely recommended for those who like their crime stories mixed with something unearthly.

[jannes_16 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Available Dark continues the adventures of Cass Neary from Generation Loss and retains a lot of the qualities that made the first books so great: a fascinating protagonist, a rich and highly visual, yet economical prose that combines the to-the-point-ness of the hardboiled school with a sense for detail and beauty influenced from the visual arts. Also, Hand still has that incredible gift of communicating the sense of a place that goes beyond mere visuals - she somehow evokes a mood, or mindset that really draws you in.Unfortunatly, the thriller and crime aspects drags somewhat this time. It alls feels a bit happenstance and vague, with Cass most of the time merely reacting to things she happen to stumble upon and actually doing very little on her own to advance the plot. A lot seem to hinge on circumstance or the machinatons of others, whose motives never become quite clear and sometimes seem a bit too convenient. The characters ar just as cool and colorful as in the last novel, but this time they seem more... cartoonish is maye to strong a word, but they're definitly not as fleshed out and belivable as the locals in Generation LossThe main mystery plot, with it's connections to nordic revivalism, black metal, art, serial killings, and strane occult underground doings is exiting, but in the end it all falls a bit flat - problably in part because it's all really just explaing through other characters monologues . Cass is never really there to observe, comment or react to it.I might come of as more critical than I intend to. The book is really very good, and most of what I've done here is really nitpicking. It's just that I really Loved G.L., and this din't quite live up to it's very high level. But it's a very worthwhile read nevertheless.

[iansales_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the second of a trilogy, preceded by Generation Loss and followed by Hard Light. I’ve not read the first – the paperback is already out of print in the UK. Available Dark does refer to the events of Generation Loss, but it’s not necessary to have read it. Briefly, in the first book cult photographer Cassie Neary was involved in the murder of another photographer, close enough that she’d be behind bars if her true role were known. At least, that’s how Available Dark presents the events of Generation Loss. Neary has been in an artistic slump for years and is best known for a single book published years earlier. Neary specialises in photographs of dead people – the story throws around names like Joel-Peter Witkin and WeeGee – and it’s because of that she’s offered a job by a shady Norwegian character. He wants her to go to Helsinki to view a series of six photos by a famous Finnish fashion photographer. The Finnish photographer was once also into death photography, and the series depicts victims in bizarre murders. Coincidentally, Neary has received a mysterious message from a past lover she had thought long dead. And he’s in Reykjavík. After telling the Norwegian the photos are worth buying, Neary heads to Iceland to track down her old boyfriend. Then the Finnish photographer and his assistant are brutally murdered, and it’s all to do with the Jólasveinar, or Yule Lads, grim Icelandic troll-like figures who were used to scare children, Nordic black metal in the 1990s, the member of one of those bands called Galdur who now lives out in the Icelandic wilderness, his band’s only, and incredibly rare, album, and events in Oslo back in the 1990s at the aforementioned Norwegian’s metal club. And, of course, the series of six photographs. An ignorant puff on the back of the book confuses black metal and death metal – they’re different genres – but Hand has a good, er, handle on the music. Neary, however, is a little too good to be true, a little too much of the sort of unkillable drug addict hard case you’d find in an urban fantasy rather than a realistic crime novel. The Reykjavík of 2012 also apparently bears little resemblance to the Reykjavík I visited in 2016, or even in 2018 (though, to be fair, I saw a number of changes between my two visits). Available Dark started out well enough, a slightly off-kilter thriller about death photography and Norwegian black metal, but the character of Neary sort of ruined it. She was too good to be true, too tough to be realistic. And it all hung on a series of murders from the 1990s that seemed unlikely to have gone undetected. I’ve always preferred novels about female detectives to those about male ones, but Available Dark, while structured like a crime novel, felt more like an urban fantasy.

[bookmarque · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What is it about Cass Neary that fascinates me? If I knew her we would not be friends. I wouldn’t even want her at a party. She’s a liar and a thief. A manipulator and an addict. She sees in darkness instead of in light. She values pleasure, but only if its price is pain. A twisted freak, basically. But an engaging one.Having just come from the abattoir that was her trip to Maine, Cass is desperate to keep herself together and the cops off her back. She receives an invitation to do some consulting in Finland and while there decides to go find her old lover who has recently sent a photo of himself that she took 30 years before. As in Generation Loss, Cass’s own penumbra of grit and despair attracts like and she’s down, down, down into a whirlpool of black metal, death photography, neolithic rituals and killing. I think the plot in this one is more deliberately evil than in the last. It feels heavier and more directly aimed at Cass even though she’s an accidental victim...a victim by propinquity.Like in G.L., Hand’s writing conveys Cass’s inner landscape very well. Shards. Razoring through any and all thoughts she has, shredding them so that Cass has to piece them together again. There’s nothing cohesive about Cass. She’s in pieces. None of them work harmoniously. Her only goal is to stay medicated enough to stay numb to them. She’s her own worst enemy, but eerily indestructible. She takes abuse like no one else because I think she needs it. I think she thinks that’s the only real contact she deserves. I’m anxiously awaiting our next meeting.

[nightwing_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In Available Dark, Elizabeth continues the journey begun in Generation Loss. Her protagonist, Cass Neary, avoiding the authorities who want to question her about a death in Maine, now finds herself landing a job identifying some obscure photographs from the Black Metal world in Finland. She is barely in Finland long enough to do the job before she goes to Iceland to locate a lover from her youth. And then it begins to get strange. Everywhere Cass goes, bodies are left behind and strange photographs await her arrival, with Finnish black metal as the soundtrack.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Trying to evade trouble she stirred up in Maine (in the novel Generation Loss), Cass Neary accepts a shady job to evaluate some photographs of questionable subject matter in Finland. Just before she is about to leave, she receives from Iceland a photo she took of a long-ago boyfriend, so she goes there next to track him down. And then the murders begin.As in Generation Loss, this sequel puts Cass in an isolated, desolate setting, the exterior landscape reflecting the interior character. However, this novel is different in tone: less gothic, more noir, with a touch of the weird as it relates to Norse mythology. The writing is good and carries the reader along, Cass is still an intriguing antihero of a character, but the mystery is more straightforward and less surprising here, although some of the business related to Odinists and heavy metal music lost me. I've enjoyed these two thrillers and will probably get around to reading the last in the trilogy.

[maneekuhi · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

My 2 star rating of Available Dark" is probably not fair. It's the first Elizabeth Hand book I have read and perhaps all of her books dwell on similar themes and story lines - very noir, Finland and Iceland in the winter (how much darker can you get?), vinyl recordings of heavy metal back to its earliest days, gruesome photos of dead people, and some equally gruesome violence in the story. There are some readers who will really appreciate Hand's skills and/or who have an interest in such photos and music; I am not one of them and regret having read this. This is not a book to be bought on a whim nor if you are into more traditional crime fiction. Research thoroughly before committing your money and time.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While still hugely dark and gritty, I don't think this was as raw as Generation Loss. (Which I'm okay with, honestly. Generation Loss fucked me up for a week.) I'm not sure if it's the book, though, or the fact that I'm familiar enough with Odinist death metal symbolism to be pretty unsurprised by almost everything that turned out happening?...

[quantumbutterfly_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fresh on the heels of deaths in Maine and not wanting to handle uncomfortable questions about them, Cass Neary accepts a job now sending her to Finland to examine photos by a prominent photographer. Death continues to follow Cass through these images... then through the gruesome murder of the photographer and his assistant. By this time she has arrived in Iceland in pursuit of another mystery: receiving a photo of her youthful love. Her time in Iceland quickly comes to link back to Finland, with a view into the Black metal scene of the early 1990s, punk photos, and trying to stay alive.Hand continues to weave a compelling story, with a strung out, has-been photographer of a protagonist who is, as her tattoo says, too tough to die.