In Plain Sight has a lot of the normal clichés. It features a private detective that is barely paying his bills and barely getting any jobs, and all of a sudden the jobs are raining down around him. Alex is also exceedingly good at his job and incredible smart and powerful. Which makes the whole no-money thing a little suspicious.

It also had that cliché where the book doesn't reveal everything Alex knows until the end, which makes it seem like Alex is scrambling around with no good idea of what to do far more often than I'd like.

What I found interesting, and unique, was that Alex lives with his mentor. They're roommates! The world also seem to have three distinct types of magic: Sorcery, runewrights and alchemy. And while Sorcerers have an unnatural long life, there wasn't any signs of any other supernatural creatures, only magic. I wonder if that will continue?

I liked the blend of magic and technology, which makes this a steampunk tale. But we didn't get much description out of it. Somewhere toward the end, you got told the sorcerers live in floating mansions. What? How cool isn't that! Did I miss that earlier? I look forward to seeing more pieces of this universe in the future.

Another cliché, and one I disliked quite a lot, was everyone's inherent dislike for private detectives. Every cop he met sneered at him. It got boring fast. But, since this is an older book set in before WW2 that makes a little sense I think. He works with an Asian Detective, and he struggles a lot with racism because Asian Detectives were still fairly rare at the time.