I Left My Haunt in San Francisco by Mark Everett Stone (Files of the BSI: Book 3)

9/10

After avenging himself on the mythical monster that killed his sister, Kal Hakela is back at the Bureau of Supernatural Investigation. But, with only a few months left on his contract, he's tempted to retire along with his new love, former MI-7 agent Jeanie.

When a friend and former BSI agent in San Francisco kills himself, he leaves Kal a clue, one he cannot ignore. The city is full of bad memories for Kal. In his last mission there, he killed a deranged serial rapist who used magic to murder his victims. Though successful, the mission resulted in unfortunate collateral damage, which earned Kal the enmity of San Francisco's ghostly Supernatural protector.

With the fate of every human on Earth at stake, Kal and his team confront a slew of Supernatural perils, from giant insects to gargoyles. And they must complete their mission without the help of the BSI, its magical weaponry, and the superhuman power of Kal's legendary rage.

This is the third book in the ongoing series Files of the BSI (Bureau of Supernatural Investigations), if you haven’t read books 1 and 2 then please do not continue onwards - I have tried to avoid giving away the plot but the books themselves need to be read in continuation as events from the previous books are mentioned.

The third book in this series sees Kal Hakela back inside the rebuilding BSI, training newbies, or Green Peas, how to survive training when he is called back into the field taking a team of his old friends and characters including Canton and Wrench.

In this book we see Kal maturing as a person. In most of the previous volumes has been so haunted by the need to destroy the class 5 supernatural that his whole life was leading to that moment with no plan on what would happen if he managed to survive that encounter. Now, not only does he have to think like other people “what happens now” but he also has to come to the realisation that he is no longer alone, which gives him more depth as a character because realising you have people to care about means that facing supernatural creatures is far scarier as BSI agents generally don’t have a long life span.

This book is set in San Francisco as Kal has to find out why and how a former BSI agent came to die and why he needed Kal to avenge him. There is a secondary story set in the past which also links up to the present. This leads us into an even older story about Emperor Norton the mythical protector of San Francisco.

This is another high impact, fast moving story from Mark Everett Stone. I am really enjoying seeing his growth as a writer reflected in the strength of his characters and am looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Kal.