Tsalmoth by Steven Brust

This is a flashback. Normally, with a long-running series, I'd say "don't start here." But you probably could start here. It's a decent place to start. And it's a current book that's easy to find, so keep that in mind.

Steven Brust has been writing the adventures of Vlad Taltos for forty years now, and Tsalmoth is the sixteenth of a planned nineteen volumes. (Jhereg was the first, if you're a traditionalist and looking for the best place to start.) There are layers and depths to the world and its explanations - not all of which have been or will be explained - but, at base, it's a far-future fantasy, in which the various kinds of magic might have some  kind of technology really far behind them, or maybe not.

Vlad is an "Easterner" - a normal human - living in the Dragarean Empire. Dragarea is the major power of this world, and its people are a distinct race (gene-engineered from baseline humans, a hundred thousand years ago or so) that resemble traditional ideas of "elfs:" long-lived, tall, slim, no facial hair, aristocratic, obsessed with position and rigidly defined by their seventeen Great Houses (each with its own allowed careers, mental habits, and styles). Vlad is a low-level crimelord in the Dragarean House of the Jhereg; this book is set fairly early in the series (roughly fourth, according to the wiki), when he was rising and successful and planning to get married.

(At this point, I might as well link to my previous posts about books in the series, in reverse chronological order: Vallista, Hawk, Tiassa, Iorich, Jhegaala, and Dzur. I might also mention that the novels are titled after the seventeen Great Houses, plus one for Vlad himself - Taltos, the second book written - and a planned final book, The Last Contract. My post on Hawk is probably the most new-reader friendly, more background and less what-does-this-new-scrap-of-information-mean.)

So Tsalmoth is like the first three books, and a couple of other flashback volumes since: a caper book about an assassin in a fantasy world, not quite interchangeable but less specific and slotted into a particular moment in Vlad's life than the books set after Certain Unpleasantnesses.

Specifically, this book is about a debt. A guy died owing Vlad 800 gold. That's a fair bit of money; he doesn't want to let it go. So he pokes around to see if there's some way he can collect. And things get complicated, as they do in caper novels - there were secret plots of various people trying to do various things, and they are not particularly happy at this short whiskered dude poking his nose in and asking questions.

Luckily, Vlad is the series hero - no, let me be less arch: luckily, he is smart and skilled and, let's not forget, a working assassin, who also has a very impressive collection of high-powered friends and allies, some of whom have their own reasons for wanting to help out in this particular case.

Brust is a smooth, engaging writer at all times, and the Vlad books - particularly the ones in Vlad's voice, including this one - give him space to engage in great tough-guy turns of phrase and narration. The series started out as fantasy crime novels, and has wandered a lot since then, but this one comes back to that initial concept, and is deeply enjoyable both as fantasy and as crime.

Let me give you a quick quote to give you a sense of the writing, from p.7:

The next morning, I told Kragar to find out what he could about the family, which is one of the things Kragar is good at. Some of the other things he's good at are reminding me of unpleasant things I've agreed to do, unintentionally sneaking up on me, and being irritating.

If you find that amusing, you'll probably like this series.