Just when I thought the Year of Sanderson was over, it continued with a final flourish. Fresh off the plane from Dragonsteel 2023 and with all four secret projects behind me, my last swag box from Sanderson’s Kickstarter arrived at my doorstep. In it, I found a small black tome adorned with a metallic design on the cover: a fedora-sporting, cigarette-smoking detective in a trenchcoat. On the back cover, a small emblem labeling the novelette a “Sanderson Curiosity.” And on the spin, the title: Long Chills & Case Dough.
This 60-ish-page story is something of a relic, in Sanderson’s terms. He initially wrote the piece before Elantris—his first novel—was picked up for publication. After years dormant in the Sanderson files, he decided to include it as a curiosity in one of the Kickstarter boxes. A curiosity, according to Sanderson himself, is a piece of work he isn’t inclined to share as a fully published work because it doesn’t quite meet his current standards for writing or storytelling.
How, then, is this fan to review it? The author specifically said it’s not up to snuff. Instead, it’s a treat, a morsel for those of us to readily devour his entree-sized books whenever they drop. Here is where I struggle. I didn’t love Long Chills & Case Dough. I’m not mad I read it, by any means, but it’s no harbinger of a storytelling revolution. It’s not supposed to be. So, reader, consider this a long-winded disclaimer. While I have storytelling critiques of Long Chills & Case Dough, the narrative and execution aren’t necessarily the point here.
Jack Derrins is a private investigator in the year 2151. While the world around him embraces the future and its many extravagant gadgets and medical breakthroughs, Derrins (called Dalley by those who know him well) adopts a 1920s air, shouting analogies straight out of the past and throwing around terms like “dame” or “doll.” His secretary Alici patches through a potential client: Camilla Ball, a woman behind a recent mass murder using a barrage of personal missiles. She insists she was framed, and Derrins accepts the case.
Long Chills & Case Dough operates in a weird sort of limbo. The setting is a futuristic Chicago, but our protagonist has all the trappings of your typical misogynistic gumshoe detective. The tonal mismatch simply doesn’t work. Given more words or page count, the story might have room to explain this away through Jack’s past or a weirdly specific interest in old crime thrillers. Such a detour here would likely derail the story, which leaves Jack’s affectations to muddle the narrative and create a mish-mash of dissonant concepts.
The novelette’s length seems to be the root of many struggles. The mystery moves along at a brisk pace, as I would expect a quick-hit thriller to do. It leaves the reader in the dust, though, tying up loose ends with reckless abandon. The glorious worldbuilding that could have occupied some of the space earlier in the story was instead usurped by Jack’s thoughts and conversations, made all the quirkier with his “dolls” and “dames.”
Sanderson’s characters—usually my favorite aspect of his work—falter here, largely for the same reasons. Too few pages, too much plot.
Despite all of this, I can’t fault Sanderson for releasing this. I can’t fault the story for being “meh” because it came with a swag box and is supposed to be a silly little treat for Sanderson fans. On that level, I appreciate Long Chills & Case Dough even if the story itself left me wanting.
-Cole
