The Spy Who Haunted Me by Simon R. Green

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Eddie Drood, at your service.  For generations my family has been keeping humanity safe from the wicked, the nasty, and the generally not-nice inhuman predators who feed on people's fear and misery.  Now one kicks evil arse better than us Droods - especially yours truly.

In fact, my arse-kicking skills have come to the attention of the legendary Alexander King, Independent Agent extraordinaire, who spent a lifetime doing anything and everything - for the right price.  Now he's on his deathbed, looking to bestow all of his priceless secrets to a worthy successor.

To decide, King challenges six competitors - myself included - to solve five mysteries all around the world, figuring that along ht way we'll backstab on another until only one remains.  But I've got to win at all costs, because King hold the most important secret of all to the Droods: the identity of the traitor in our midst.

This is the 3rd book in Green's Secret Histories series and they just keep getting better.  As you can tell from the title and other titles for the first two books, this series plays off the James Bond theme, and it's never better as it is in this book.

Edwin Drood is one of the most effective field agents his family has in the battle against aliens, demons, monsters, elves, and all the other things that want to kill and eat us.  When he is summoned to compete against 5 other super agents from around the globe to win a cache of secrets that could change the balance of power, he does it for the family.

You have to love those he got to compete against, even if it's just the names.  The two women are named Honey Lake and Lethal Harmony, how more James Bond can you get?  Honey is ultra deep cover CIA and Lethal, nicknamed Katt, is a devious dragon lady form Katmandu who has no problem taking out the competition.  The Blue Fairy, the gay half elf backstabber from the last book, comes back to throw his weight around, trying to prove himself to Queen Maab.  Henry Walker, from the author's Nighside series, and Peter King the grandson of The Independent Agent himself rounds out the competitors.

The intense nature of the competition makes strange bedfellows and while you can tell this group may not trust each other, at all, there is still a sense of respect and mutual admiration.  That respect, however, does not stop them from taking out the competition and by the end of the book only two of them are left alive, but the twists and turns this book takes will leave you guessing who the killer is until the end.  While the deaths come out of the blue, you can't help but be surprised by them at the same time because you are so caught up in the craziness of the story.  That and the order they bite the dust in wasn't what I though it would be going into this.

The other part about his that I loved so much was the mysteries that they got to investigate.  From the Loch Ness Monster to Bigfoot and Roswell, they got to investigate some of the worlds biggest mysteries that for most of us are really footnotes in pop culture history.  The take the author puts on these is hilarious and dangerous at the same time.  The other two mysteries I had to look up as I was not that familiar with them.  The Tunguska Event in Russia that knocked over 80 million trees over a area of  831 square miles and the mystery surrounding the U.S.S. Eldridge, otherwise know as the Philadelphia Experiment.  The authors take on these two events are both striking in the originality and believable in the context of the book.  He was able to take things have been written about in more ways then one, but was still able to come up with his own unique spin on them.

This series has everything I love in urban fantasty; lots of action, great characters, and a sense of humor,  Hands down this is my favorite book in the series so far and I can't wait to read the new one that just came out, From Hell With Love.  If you would like, and have the free time on your hands, you can go back and read my reviews of the first two books in the serires, The Man With The Golden Torc and Daemons Are Forever. 

This will qualify for the Thriller & Suspense Reading Challenge 2010 and the Typically British Reading Challenge 2010, both of which are hosted by Carolyn of Book Chick City.