Description:

It should have been a case like any other: a missing princess, a king willing to pay in gold for her return. But before he realizes it, private investigator Eddie LaCrosse, a slightly shopworn sword jockey with a talent for discretion and detection, is swept up in a web of mystery and deceit involving a brutally murdered royal heir, a queen accused of an unspeakable crime and the tragic past he thought he'd left behind.
First in a series of hard-boiled fantasy detective novels, in the vein of Glen Cook's Garrett series.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Equal parts sword-and-sorcery action/adventure and noir whodunit, Bledsoe's finely polished debut is evocative of fantasy legend Fritz Leiber's classic tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Bledsoe's narrative, while set in a comparable world, features only one protagonist: sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse, a private investigator who has spent most of his life trying to distance himself from a shadowy and tragic past. When his old childhood friend, King Philip of Arentia, enlists his help to unravel a scandalous mystery surrounding the brutal death of the young royal heir—a murder in which the king's beautiful wife, Rhiannon, is the prime suspect—LaCrosse accepts only to encounter a deity who forces him to come to grips with the horrific events of his youth. Incorporating elements from both hard-boiled mystery and heroic fantasy, Bledsoe's genre-blending first novel is both stylish and self-assured: Raymond Chandler meets Raymond E. Feist. (Nov.)
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Review

Some writers write funny stuff. Some writers write funny characters. With The Sword-edged Blonde Alex Bledsoe has written a compelling story with fascinating characters - who are so witty and whose attitude is so wry that I laughed AND cared. That's real comedy, folks, the hardest kind of fiction to write, and Bledsoe brings it off with panache. --Orson Scott Card

The Sword-Edged Blonde has all the finesse and depth of a great hard-boiled mystery, but takes place in a fully-realized heroic fantasy setting. From start to finish, it's a treat for readers of either genre, and easily one of the better books I've had the pleasure of reading this year. Don't miss this one. --Charles deLint