Dread Brass Shadows is the fifth book of the Garrett, P.I. books by Glen Cook. It is a Fantastic Noir series set in a High Fantasy world. Garrett is a private investigator, former Marine, and Knight in Sour Armor working to solve a variety of cases with all the witches as well as other creatures about him.
Garrett is having an exceptionally bad day with his longtime paramour, Tinnie Tates, being stabbed for seemingly no reason. Before he dies, though, he mentions a mysterious "book." After dispatching the assassin, a naked woman stumbles into Garrett's house and soon disappears. After that, a giant bounty hunter named Winger and a mysterious beauty named Carla Lindo Ramda ask Garrett to find the book.
As the story goes on, more people become interested in the mysterious book. Gnorst Gnorst, Chodo Contague, Lubbock, and the mysterious Serpent. The book turns out to The Book of Shadows, a mysterious artifact that allows a human to shapeshift into a hundred different identities with all of their power. It is enough to disrupt old alliances, destroy friendships, and leave Garrett with uncomfortable decisions.
It is followed by Red Iron Nights.
- Amazonian Beauty: Garrett doesn't think this of Winger but it seems most others disagree.
- Artifact of Doom: The Book of Shadows is an object that dwarves believe to be pure evil and Garrett believes is too powerful to run around with.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: At the end, Garrett is spared the moral dilemma of having to help murder Chodo Contague because the Serpent poisons Chodo first, causing the crime lord to suffer a stroke.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Willard Tate. He is willing to do absolutely anything and everything to avenge his niece's assault. And does so by killing the Serpent horribly.
- Big Bad Wannabe:
- Lubbock wants to be an Evil Sorcerer so bad he can taste it but doesn't have any magical tallent. He needs the Book of Shadows to become one.
- The Serpent is also one as she wants to be all powerful with the book but sacrificed most of her power into it, so she's easily defeated by Chodo.
- Bounty Hunter: Winger named this as her profession when she first came to town, but expanded her career to a wider range of shady work.
- Co-Dragons: Subverted by Crask and Saddler when they become Dragon with an Agenda, after which they're on the run from Contague payback.
- Covers Always Lie: Dread Brass Shadows's cover depicts a dwarf reading a newspaper near a modern-looking drainage grating. While there is minor printing technology in Karenta (otherwise Garrett's book collection would be far more valuable than his entire business), there's nothing on that scale, and sanitation is still at the "gardee loo!" stage.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Whatever the dwarves did to Gnorst Gnorst that shocked Winger.
- Honor Before Reason: Chodo would have been able to get rid of Garrett but keeps him alive to explain why he's killing him.
- Identical Stranger: Carla Ramada is a Downplayed Trope example as she looks like Tinnie but only for someone not familiar with either of them. It's still enough to get Tinnie stabbed. Another doppelganger is a more exact match because they were using the Book of Shadows.
- Impossibly Tacky Clothes: Winger's taste in dresses leaves people's eyes watering.
- Missing Mom: Winger confesses to abandoning her child with her husband.
- Naked People Trapped Outside: The first of the mystery redheads in Dread Brass Shadows stumbles into Garrett's house stark naked and immediately passes out.
- Status Quo Is God: The status quo is upended as Chodo Contague and Garrett's long term truce is shattered and he's forced into a coma.
- Straight Gay: Crask and Sadler, Chodo Contague's two top killers, until they tried to take over. If there's any hint of their being lovers in the first seven or eight books, it's very subtle. When it's finally mentioned, nobody makes a big deal of it. The only one who figures them out almost instantly after meeting them is... Winger, who's supposedly too dumb to come in from rain.
- Villainous Rescue: He's saved from dwarves by Crask and Sadler, then from Chodo's thugs by a passing tyrannosaur.
