Book Review: Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard Book 2)

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Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard Book 2) by Melissa F. Olson

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As a null, Scarlett Bernard possesses a rare ability to counteract the supernatural by instantly neutralizing spells and magical forces. For years she has used her gift to scrub crime scenes of any magical traces, helping the powerful paranormal communities of Los Angeles stay hidden. But after LAPD detective Jesse Cruz discovered Scarlett’s secret, he made a bargain with her: solve a particularly grisly murder case, and he would stay silent about the city’s unearthly underworld.

Now two dead witches are found a few days before Christmas, and Scarlett is once again strong-armed into assisting the investigation. She soon finds a connection between the murders and her own former mentor, Olivia, a null who mysteriously turned into a vampire and who harbors her own sinister agenda. Now Scarlett must revisit her painful past to find Olivia—unless the blood-drenched present claims her life first.

 

MY REVIEW

Such an improvement over the first book.

The world-building in Dead Spots felt generic except for the addition of a null crime scene cleaner. In the second book, Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard), the uniqueness of the world – a labyrinth of a new mythology building on the boring cinderblock foundation of the first – has come to life. Suddenly the series is looking interesting.

I should note that in the first book, the establishing scene defining her abilities and specialty magic involves the cleanup of a bird. The effect and non-effects of her null abilities as established there are important in the second case. Not that you need to read the first book to enjoy the second. Just the two situations together made some very good world-building.

For the second book, the main character becomes more engaging, as she moves beyond her damage and takes control of her life. The murder mystery felt more urgent. In the first book, the urgency felt artificially enforced. In the second book, the ticking clock device felt real. Like the rush of an oncoming car.

The downside is the Romantic Heroes both remain neutered – and I had hoped the policeman would wander off with his new love interest so we can stick with the more interesting combo of Scarlett and the regions’ second-in-command werewolf (who needs to work on being an “Alpha” male hero). Hopefully in the next book the author will figure out how to make toes curl from the romance as well as the mystery.

Anyway, many of the issues that made the first book only so-so have been fixed. I can only hope to see a similar jump in the next book. Where the first book only felt worn-out, the second book now feels like a comfortable pair of worn-out jeans. I am hoping the third book will be like a comfortable pair of jeans that hugs every curve – in other words, the perfect Urban Fantasy book.

Book Review: Dead Eye Series

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Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman by Jim Bernheimer
Dead Eye: The Skinwalker Conspiracies by Jim Bernheimer

SERIES REVIEW

Last month I went over an awesome sci-fi/mystery series by Liana Brooks, this month I thought I would talk about another favorite author’s who has a mystery/urban-fantasy, Jim Bernheimer and his Dead Eye series. The series is from early in his writing career, but the character and supporting cast have all the quirks and humanity you expect in Bernheimer books. I would love to see more books of this series, but it doesn’t make nearly as much money as his D-List Supervillain series.

Writing being the uneasy mix of creativity and putting food on the table means if a author has a choice between writing two stories which he is interested in, he is going to choose the one more likely to get recompense. But, maybe, the Supervillain creativity well will run low and Mr. Bernheimer will need a break and we will get a book three in this series. Each of the books is good as a stand-alone so read away! (Oh, and purchase them, so, you know, the drive of putting food on the table makes writing more of these books more tasty to the author.)

 

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Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman by Jim Bernheimer

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My name is Mike Ross. I’m a Ferryman. I help people with ghost problems, or ghosts with people problems. Funny thing, no one ever helps me with my problems. Civil War ghosts bent on killing me, Skinwalkers who just want my body, and a vindictive spirit linked both to my bloodline and my destiny… It turns out the dead still hold a good deal of influence over the world, and they don’t want to give it up. I’m in way over my head. Fortunately, I’m too stubborn to quit.

 

MY REVIEW

Another excellent Jim Bernheimer book, in yet another genre – this one Urban Fantasy. He gets to do his normal snark, but at lower levels then the superhero (Confessions of a D-List Superhero) and the sci-fi police procedural (Prime Suspects) series. He continues to master the first person Point of View voice.

The book is from early in his writing career and shows a passion, just an underlying something, that makes me feel this is a personal favorite. I love the description on the 2nd page; it leaped off the page 
“Me, I was still under warranty, so they shipped me back for replacement parts…”
The character’s voice is captured in this sentence – partial despair with a breath of hope, but mostly getting on with life. Of all the characters Mr. Bernheimer has created, I think I identify with Mike Ross the most.

The overall manuscript feels like a collection of short stories, with each vignette separate but a connecting overall story arc as well. Makes it easy to read a section and put down for other activities; I read it in one gulp per my normal reading habit. As mentioned the story is earlier in his writing career so some of the transitions are bumpy. But the character makes the trip worth a little shimmy. The fight scenes are brutal, dirty exchanges concentrating on survival; the character is getting on with life, and plans to keep it with training from the wrestling team at high school and the all-expense-paid training from Uncle Sam. Towards the end of the book, the fighting gets more Fantasy/magical and isn’t quite as fun – but makes up for it by making the magic stronger as the main character learns how to cope with the new necromancy world he has been thrust into. Be interesting to see what happens next, as the character continue to grow into his full potential.

Give me two pennies, because I want to take another trip with the Ferryman.

 

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Dead Eye: The Skinwalker Conspiracies by Jim Bernheimer

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My name is Mike Ross and I’m a Ferryman – like in the Greek myth. I didn’t ask for, or really want, the job, but I’m trying to make the best of it. Most ghosts are okay and just need a little help to get where they need to go. Unfortunately, there are lots of exceptions, like power-mad psychopaths, spirits still trying to fight battles long since lost, and the worst of the lot – the Skinwalkers. They live vicariously by possessing people and controlling them like puppet masters. Then they toss them aside when they’ve outlived their usefulness.

One of them stole my father fifteen years ago, and now I’m going to make that ghost pay.

 

MY REVIEW

A wonderful seven-hour read. While the Dead Eye series is set up with stand-alone chapters, little short stories in-and-of themselves, I read the book in one sitting. I didn’t mean to, but after about half-way through, I couldn’t put the book down.

Mike Ross has gone on a road trip to find his father with his blind Pastor friend to keep him on the straight and narrow path while crossing the country following Skinwalkers. A dirty, knock-them-down fight opens the book, but the action is slower than the first book as the magic continues to grow more and more every battle. The first few chapters don’t seem to be going anywhere, but are wonderful little vignettes providing the character’s powers, history, and introducing the cast without the typical retrospection so common in series books. Nope, Mr. Berheimer completely shows everything instead of telling us. Great storytelling.

Mr. Bernheimer has quite a bit of fun revisiting (Texas) history from a ghost’s viewpoint. Episode 17 “Dallas Texas – Paranormal Population: One” and Episode 19 “Trying to Forget the Alamo” adds an aspect of worldbuilding, making the book both tied to the real world and distinctly not Our real world (maybe, at least I hope so).

The strongest thread point of this manuscript is romantic – taking a bit away from the action of the Urban Fantasy. Page 40 captures Mike’s problem of finding love after becoming a Ferryman in two sentences, set immediately after meeting with a single-mother stripper he used to date before everything changed: “The fact that she was better off without me was unsettling … It made me wonder, what kind of gal would be better off WITH me?”

The answers which danced in my head after he asked himself this question went from bad to worse. Dead, crazy, tortured prisoner, someone so desperate and broke (mentally and financially) you never know why they love you. The thing is Mike is such a real person, even as ink on page, you pray he doesn’t end up with such a person but at the same time you hope he finds someone because he is so lonely after everything he had seen and done and the Pastor just isn’t enough. And when you are hoping, you also don’t want the author to sell some perfect person for the perfect love interest. You really do want Mike to meet someone who is better off with him.

Does Mr. Bernheimer pull it off? Well, that would be telling. I’m just going to say Victoria Poe is not exactly the person I want directing my road trip.

Book Review: A Time & Shadows Mystery Series

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The Day Before: Time & Shadows Mystery (Book 1) by Liana Brooks
Convergence Point: A Time & Shadows Mystery (Book 2) by Liana Brooks
Decoherence: A Time & Shadows Mystery (Book 3) by Liana Brooks

SERIES REVIEW

Any long-term readers of my blog know one of my favorite authors is Liana Brooks. I read everything she writes, I attend book launches long-distance, I stalk … um … follow her on Facebook. Why does she have to be a West Coast writer – forever 3,000 miles away? I adore her writing so much I’ll even read a series on time travel if she writes it, my least favorite sci-fi variation. And, you know what?, I loved it. She actually came up with a mechanism I liked – giving agency to the characters.

That is my normal problem with time travel.

Option A: You can’t change time. Characters have no agency; when they go back in time, they get blocked at every turn trying to make changes. The only option available is an emotional journey and I’m not into soul-searching for it’s own sake after the first version of this time travel option. I get it – the character goes from angry, to frustrated, to acceptance, and returns home a changed person. Great the first read, not the fortieth.

Option B: You can change time, but then you can’t return to your original point because your future timeline has disconnected because of your actions. The character becomes lost in the sea of infinite timelines, a Dutchman never again making home port. In this option the characters appears to agency, but they don’t. Because, really, that previous timeline the character wanted change is still out there, moving forward without them. Sure they have created a “happy” timeline, but it doesn’t erase the other line.

Ms. Brook twisted the option B with a dash of energy-wave-cycle science, crashing together a theory where agency exists for characters between the cycles. And she mashed it up with a murder mystery and political thriller.

Did I mention she is one of my favorite authors?

See the book blurbs and my individual book reviews below.

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The Day Before: Time & Shadows Mystery (Book 2) by Liana Brooks

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A body is found in the Alabama wilderness. The question is:

Is it a human corpse … or is it just a piece of discarded property?

Agent Samantha Rose has been exiled to a backwater assignment for the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation, a death knell for her career. But then Sam catches a break—a murder—that could give her the boost she needs to get her life back on track. There’s a snag, though: the body is a clone, and technically that means it’s not a homicide. And yet, something about the body raises questions, not only for her, but for coroner Linsey Mackenzie.

The more they dig, the more they realize nothing about this case is what it seems … and for Sam, nothing about Mac is what it seems, either.

This case might be the way out for her, but that way could be in a bodybag.

A thrilling new mystery from Liana Brooks, The Day Before will have you looking over your shoulder and questioning what it means to be human.

 

MY REVIEW

Wow, I knew Ms. Brooks could write – her superhero romance is fantastic – but wow.

A police procedural with sci-fi time-travel mix. The procedural is set in the near future – about 50 years from now. 25-ish years ago half of humanity was lost to a plague and the survivors joined nations and moved forward, so Samantha, the main character, works for the North American government. Ms. Brooks has done an excellent job of creating a new culture from the fallout, plus a pretty interesting scientific possibility for time travel.

I highly recommend reading the chapter teasers. The stuff at the start of chapters 8, 13, and 23 give the motivation for Iteration 1 and lays the groundwork for the series.

Full Disclosure: Received free from author as part of an on-line book launch. No mention of review in the transaction. Attended launch because loved her other books.

 

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Convergence Point: A Time & Shadows Mystery (Book 1) by Liana Brooks

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Agent Samantha Rose has already died once…and knows the exact date she’ll die again.

Having taken down a terrorist organization bent on traveling through time to overthrow the government, Sam figured she was done dealing with the unbelievable. Finally out of backwater Alabama, she’s the senior agent in a Florida district, and her life is back on track.

Until a scientist is found dead. And then an eco-terrorist. And then a clone of herself…again.

As the pieces start to fall together, they paint a picture that seems to defy everything they know about time and physics. But the bodies are all too real, and by partnering up with Agent MacKenzie once more, they might just figure out what’s going on. And when.

 

MY REVIEW

Is it possible for Convergence Point to be even better than The Day Before of the Time and Shadows series? Yes, I believe it is.

First off, we get a little more romance this time. Not center stage, but nicely worked into the story. Second the mystery-procedural investigation and as much legwork and slow reveal as the last time. The on-edge feeling continues throughout the book of who may die next. Police officers call in, warrants are retrieved – you really feel like these are officers doing their jobs. Too many books have officers breaking the law to bring criminals in – this one makes you feel that these are real officers who really believe, obey, and enforce the law.

I do dislike how men still treat women poorly – I had hoped 50 years in the future to see better of humanity. But after a plague wipes out half the population and women become breeding machines in some areas of the planet, I expect some backsliding would occur from our “enlightened times”.

I should note there were a couple places where characters seemed to act out of character. Not always sure the change was because of an Iteration crossing over.

But the reason why this is amazing is the worldbuilding. As my other reviews indicate, I LOVE good worldbuilding. Ms. Brooks brings to the table several layers to the clone world – including Sam having to deal with other Iteration versions of herself dying in this one. The initial fallout from the Yellow Plague – both the crumbling of nations and the rebuilding. And, of course, time travel.

Ms. Brooks, with the Time and Shadows, has come up with a comprise to time travel which returns agency to the time-travel stories, plus gives one of the best motivations for murder I have ever seen. What would you do, who would you kill, to keep your reality alive instead of collapsing into a dream? For creating a viable, to me at least, time-travel-multiverse thread I have to give Ms. Brooks five stars!

 

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Decoherence: A Time & Shadows Mystery (Book 3) by Liana Brooks

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Samantha Rose and Linsey MacKenzie have established an idyllic life of married bliss in Australia, away from the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation, away from mysterious corpses, and—most of all—away from Dr. Emir’s multiverse machine.

But Sam is a detective at heart, and even on the other side of the world, she can’t help wonder if a series of unsolved killings she reads about are related—not just to each other, but to the only unsolved case of her short career.

She knows Jane Doe’s true name, but Sam never discovered who killed the woman found in an empty Alabama field in spring of 2069. She doesn’t even know which version of herself she buried under a plain headstone.

When Mac suddenly disappears, Sam realizes she is going to once more be caught up in a silent war she still doesn’t fully understand. Every step she takes to save Mac puts the world she knows at risk, and moves her one step closer to becoming the girl in the grave.

 

MY REVIEW

I want to sit down and create a timeline … line?, woven cloth matrix folded in parts, wibbly-wobbly time knot … anyway, I would like to try to create a iteration and people tracking tool to follow this story through the three books of the series. I am totally going to do this sometime – likely in three or four years. If I come back to books (and I will with this series), it usually takes me around half a decade.

This is not a stand-alone book. Read books one and two before reading book three.

The third of the series science fiction world-building isn’t as strong as the first two, which isn’t surprising since by this time the world has been defined. The romance established in the second book has been solidified by the third. The police procedural isn’t quite as clear cut to follow as the first two books as the world(s) spiral toward decoherence. 

So the story didn’t knock my socks off as much as the first two – on the other hand, I still can’t find my shoes.

Book Review: Southern Bound (Max Porter #1)

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Southern Bound (Max Porter Mysteries #1) by Stuart Jaffe

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When Max Porter discovers his office is haunted by the ghost of a 1940s detective, he does the only sensible thing … he starts a detective agency!

Thrust neck-deep into a world of old mysteries and dangerous enemies, he will face ghosts, witches, and curses. He will discover a world in which survival might be the easiest challenge. And he will do anything necessary to keep his wife and his life from falling away.

Real history meets the paranormal in this thrilling, suspenseful series!

 

MY REVIEW

Ok – After finishing the story, I re-looked at the title and it took on a dozen new meanings. Rarely have does a title fit a story this well.

The story is a research-mystery genre, with a little paranormal thrown in. I liked the character doing research in actual books, as well as internet, foot work, and face-to-face interviews. Slow in parts, because research is slow. Fast when a breakthrough happens. You feel like you are going step-by-step through the process with the researcher. No magic Google searches or wikipedia entries, the character needed to touch books not scanned onto the internet.

And because the story is research, the paranormal in a detective story works. Often, as the character trudged once again off to the library (which becomes a character in and of itself), you forget this world also has ghosts and witches – or the ghosts and witches feel the same as the employers and thugs, the world has them, not all are pleasant, and you still need to make a living.

I’ve been reading a lot of urban fantasy genre with mystery edges, and so I found the fact the romance was between two married people rediscovering their relationship after a rocky patch very refreshing and relaxing.

I really liked the POW history aspect. A must-read for anyone who likes mysteries and is from North Carolina. At the end of the story you want to visit all the places appearing in the book and also find out what parts were true and what were fiction.

Book Review: Duplicate Effort (Retrieval Artist #7)

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Duplicate Effort (Retrieval Artist #7) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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Retrieval Artist Miles Flint has a mission: take down the law firm of Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor. He enlists the aides of old friends and old enemies. But as the mission gets underway, one member of his team dies horribly.

Flint can no longer take on the entire universe. He violated the rules of his Retrieval Artist mentor and now has a lot to lose. But he can’t reverse the events he set in motion—and the crisis he caused might destroy everything—and everyone—he loves.

International bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has won two Hugo awards, a World Fantasy Award, and three Asimov’s Readers Choice Awards. IO9 called her six (so far) bestselling, award-winning Retrieval Artist novels, inspired by this novella, one of the top ten science fiction detective series ever.

 

MY REVIEW

First off, love.the.book.title “Duplicate Effort”, which has more than one meaning in the story.

This is the first of the fifteen-book “Retrieval Artist” series I read and it is the 7th of the series and works well as a stand-alone, though I believe it would work better if read in order. The author does provide good insight to the other books like a universe building on itself.

Second, I love the initial premise. What is a cop to do with a self-cleaning crime scene? How do you save the evidence before it is destroyed?

Each layer of the book get more and more interesting. I’m not going to go any further so I don’t give any of the mysteries away.