The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

High-ranking Investigator Ana Dolabra needs a new assistant, and is matched with Apprentice Engraver Dinios Koll. Din has a big secret; he’s dyslexic and has trouble writing as well as reading. He’s been magically altered to capture memories of scenes and conversations, triggering his recordings with vials of various scents. Other talents become apparent later, including lockpicking. A death from dappleglass is his first crime scene to inspect and record. Ana prefers to stay in her apartment, often wearing a blindfold to reduce visual stimuli. She has learned to read a sort of Braille. The pair are later sent to Talagray, near the seawall, which is dangerous territory during the wet season when immense leviathans try to breach the seawall. I thought of whales, but leviathans are much, much bigger and quite dangerous. Several civil engineers who maintain the seawall have recently died in a similar manner. Wealthy or well-connected people live further from the sea, protected by other ring walls, and Din sends money home to his family in hopes that they can relocate.

Dangerously modified plants, poison, and fire are other elements in a very clever fantasy mystery. Ana and her young sidekick Din were inspired by fictional detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, created in the 1930s by Rex Stout. The Tainted Cup won the Hugo Award in 2025, and sequels in the Ana & Din series include A Drop of Corruption, and A Trade of Blood, coming out this August. The series, confusingly, is also known as The Shadow of the Leviathan. A little dark, but very compelling reading, and Din is an appealing main character. I read this for my book group, and probably wouldn’t have read it otherwise, but found it quite a pageturner.

Brenda