Vigil by Angela Slatter

Reviewed by Duncan Lawie. This review first appeared in The BSFA Review.

Urban fantasy, as we now know it, is dominated by a few big cities and a few common types of nightmare creatures. Angela Slatter’s success with Vigil is to make such a style work in a place as seemingly mundane as Brisbane, Australia and to do so with a collection of Weyrd more subtly defined than the default vampires or were creatures.

Whilst it is a long time since I lived in Brisbane, the city I see in this book is familiar. Slatter makes good use of iconic locations. The book returns repeatedly to the cliffs of Kangaroo Point, which feels like a natural gathering place for flying mythical creatures. West End, always friendly to those of a Goth outlook, works well as a suburb for the Strange to be hidden amidst the merely strange. The ordinary city comes alive too, particularly the incessant driving to get from one place to another.

In common with much urban fantasy, we have a first-person female protagonist, a private investigator with a liminal role. In this case Verity Fassbinder has mixed blood. She was brought up by her normal grandparents after her Weyrd father died in prison for killing and butchering children. For the Weyrd of Brisbane, the old ways of preying on the normals are forbidden for selfish reasons rather than moral ones. Fassbinder Senior’s principal crime in their eyes was to bring them close to exposure.

There is an interesting theme here of fitting in, of being an immigrant community which needs to take up the apparent norms of their host society, but it seems a generation out of date. Both the Weyrd and regular human population of Brisbane we see here are immigrants from Europe to Australia and their descendants. I understand the nervousness most modern Australians feel about invoking the Aboriginal uncanny, but it seems a little odd that the waves of immigration of the last forty years aren’t visible.

Nevertheless, the Weyrd come from a broad variety of European ancestry – creatures of myth, fairy tale, nightmare. Many aren’t clearly identifiable types, which means they can take individual shape, whilst some “types” help to shape the plot. Amongst these are Sirens from Greek myth, though I am rather bemused that these are flying women, when I would have expected such to be called Harpies; perhaps that carries expectations of ugliness. The angels are dependent on the faith of the people for their power. The Three Fates run a cafe. 

The private investigator plot is a classic mechanism for explaining the city. There is every sense that this city, this community, has existed for a long time and that many stories are waiting to be told. Slatter throws several apparently unconnected mysteries into the mix and gradually shapes them together. Can the new boyfriend really be as good as he seems? Who is killing Sirens and why? How does The Winemaker connect to Verity’s father? Slatter builds up the intrigue, though there is never a genuine feeling of peril. Fortunately, Verity’s character convinces, to the extent that I found myself getting somewhat frustrated with Verity’s apparent obtuseness in chasing the clues placed in front of her. 

Perhaps this tells me that Slatter is a great writer, building the tension in her reader by showing us things which our protagonist has seen but not understood. There is clearly enough here to show that Slatter can plot well, but she needs a tighter edit. Verity’s relationship with her primary police contact is inconsistent, which makes it harder to understand either of them. Minor items would matter less except that the reader is trawling for clues – for example a conversation about taking a child to school the next day when that next day turns out, in the next paragraph, to be Sunday.

Beyond these gripes, Vigil is an entertaining read, particularly if you know the setting.