Catch and Kill by Craig Schaefer Narrator: Susannah Jones
Series: Neon Meridian #1
on May 19, 2026
Genres: Urban Fantasy
Length: 9 hours, 48 minutes
Format: Audiobook
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
Amazon, Audible
Magic is no longer a mystery—it’s a corporate asset.
Seventy years ago, people turned on their televisions and saw magic on the streets of Manhattan. Real magic, and real monsters, in broad daylight.Today, corporate sorcerers defend their employers’ interests with curses and bullets, street vendors sell cheap talismans to the masses, and the most popular late-night talk show host is a demon. It’s a world of wonders and terrors, but you still have to earn a living.
Emily Yeats is a blue-collar witch from Brooklyn, selling her services as a security auditor. For a price, she and her unconventional team will invade your business after hours, find every last loophole and flaw, and tell you how to fix it.
Until now, the challenges were all simulated.
Strapped for cash, Emily agrees to a dangerous an executive with the world’s biggest media conglomerate wants her boss out of the way, and she hires Emily to dig up a scandal that he took a bribe to bury.
Now bodies are dropping left and right, a supernatural assassin is on Emily’s trail, and everyone from the Mafia to the mayor’s office wants to silence her for good. It’s too late to back out the only way to survive is to finish the job, or the story she’s hunting won’t be the only thing getting killed.
Catch and Kill is the first book in the Neon Meridian, a new series set in the same world as Schaefer’s Harmony Black and Daniel Faust series. A little more on the cyberpunk side of urban fantasy Catch and Kill is set in a world aware of the magic in it. Having witches, demons and undead on the payroll is the normal coast of business. This heist style story features a misfit team, who wanted to be on the right side of law but now find themselves walking dangerous lines to stay together and beat out the competition.
Emily Yeats ran a good business testing security, breaking into companies to show them the weak points. Her team is probably the best in the business, but because of their strange composition another security group has targeted her jobs and swooped in last minute to pick up those contracts. Emily is now stuck with a lot of bills, no way to pay the team and barely hanging onto her business. Opportunity comes knocking when an executive hires the team to get some dirt on her boss and the Mayor of the city. This is not the kind of job her team usually takes but the payout would be great if they could make it happen and it isn’t quite on the black ops side, it is more a gray area. However, when the job goes sideways Emily and team need to regroup, replan and figure out how to get out of the mess they are in and hopefully not get killed in the process.
I enjoy a good heist, down on your luck team story. The team is composed Deci, an android that moonlights as a dominatrix and probably has a soul, Brewster the ex-military muscle and companion to Deci and then Gilly who is a wiz at computers and hacking but has had enough body work that she actually might be more cat than human at this point. They are an interesting mash up of characters, but they did remind me a lot of other combos of characters Shaefer has written in the past. Still rag tag teams are fun story lines so while unoriginal it was still entertaining.
I found Emily easy to root for. She doesn’t really have family to lean on but she does have some great friends and mentors from her past. Some of the most interesting things about her were her specific ties to magic and how she interacts with both spiders and her normal spirit guide that helps powerup her magic. Emily is smart, resourceful and true to her friends. I do hope that a relationship from her past with a man running a family (mob) group gets a little more time in the next story in the series.
The overall plot of the story has some surprise turns that did make the story just that more exciting. A few possible cameos and a few references to characters in other books set in this world and going to be fun easter eggs for fans of those series. While you don’t need to have read any of Shaefer‘s other works I think it would help to understand the state of the world at this point. Not my favorite Schaefer book as I really enjoyed their fantasies more than urban fantasy but a solid fun quick read.
“Honor is dumb, and treachery always wins.”
Narration:
Performance: ★★★★★
Character Separation: ★★★★
Diction: ★★★★
Pacing/Flow: ★★★★★
Sound Effects: none
Susannah Jones is a fantastic narrator. I’ve probably listened to over 40 books she has narrated and I’m never disappointed in her performance. She does UF and PNR so well and her voice brings the magic practically to life. All the characters are distinguishable and feel unique. She always adds to my overall enjoyment of a story with her capture of both the serious and the silly in a story.
Listen to a clip: HERE
About Craig Schaefer
Craig Schaefer’s books have taken readers across a modern America mired in occult mysteries, from the seamy criminal underworld of the Daniel Faust series; to the supernatural espionage and intrigue of the Harmony Black series; to the apocalyptic parallel worlds of the Wisdom’s Grave trilogy.
He currently lives in North Carolina, where he can be found haunting museums, libraries, abandoned crossroads, and other places where dark fantasy authors tend to congregate.
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This sounds interesting! I haven’t read Craig Schaefer before, but I’ll definitely have to check out his work. UF is a genre I really enjoy! Thank you for the great review and for sharing your thoughts.
Fun UF, I’ve enjoyed their fantasy just a little more but this has some great potential
I love a good cameo!