Simon R. Green you magnificent bitch. You rarely disappoint (can’t say I was overly fond of the Ghost Chasers) and you really didn’t with Dr. DOA. I have to say, since this came our relatively recently, there may be SPOILERS here. So beware and don’t read if you don’t like them.

The latest in the Secret Histories books finds Eddie Drood wanting to celebrate Christmas with his lady love, Molly Metcalf. Of course, things don’t go as he plans, not when the family needs you.

So off Eddie goes to Drood Hall, ready to kick asses and take names…and promptly pass right the fuck out. What? Seems Eddie has been poisoned and the most likely suspect is a bad guy that no one has ever seen and who may or may not be real, Dr. DOA. Regardless of who did it, Eddie has been poisoned and it likely happened in Drood Hall.

With literally nothing to lose, Eddie takes the case of his own murder to try and save himself and to find the traitor. Meanwhile, quite aside from the fact that he’s dying, someone is out to kill him. They’re possessing people Eddie and Molly know from the old days, using them as proxies to try and take revenge on Eddie for some unknown deed.

From a floating psychic business (which sounded an awful lot like the helicarrier from the Avengers movies) to last chance hospitals and weird science experiments, Eddie and Molly try to find Dr. DOA and a cure. The problem is, even their contacts don’t seem to know if DOA is real and where he/she might be if they are.

Eddie and Molly wreak their own particular brand of havoc in a last chance hospital, an enormous science lab under a mountain and crashed space ship in Wales. Because where else would you have a crashed space ship?

Dr. DOA leads them both around by the nose and by the troubles that they get into, I can only assume that he’s using them to get rid of some competition before he does his final reveal. And what a final reveal it is!

For several books now, Jack Drood (RIP Jack) has been warning Eddie about the Merlin glass and the Something that lives inside it. I don’t know if Jack knew precisely what was inside it but apparently Dr. DOA learned to manipulate it. Because Dr. DOA is Edmund Drood from the alternate dimension where the Droods were all killed. He is Eddie’s mirror universe evil twin and he wants to do the same thing to the Droods in Eddie’s universe that he did to the Droods in his, kill them all.

But Simon, dear man, has left us hanging! That bastard! He leaves us with a cliff hanger of Eddie and Molly trapped in the Armoury as it was transported to the other Drood hall with no way for them to get home or to warn the others of Edmund, a.k.a.-Dr. DOA. *shakes fists* On the one hand, sonofabitch I hate cliff hanger books (see- Dresden Files, Changes). On the other hand, that means at least one more Secret Histories book! I know that Simon is winding down the series he’s writing in favor of singleton books due to health concerns, so I’m happy he didn’t try and do a hasty finish of the Secret Histories like he did with the Ghost Chasers.

All in all, despite the cliff hanger (or maybe because of it), Dr. DOA is a great read. There’s no need to read the other Secret Histories books, but it would certainly give you background. Rating: A