The One I Left Behind by Jennifer McMahon - a review

If it was possible to give more than five stars on a review this book deserves it.

In a typical small American town a silent killer stalks the streets kidnapping, maiming and killing five women and disappearing until twenty years later when suddenly it starts all over again. Is it a copy-cat killer or has the murderer the police dubbed Neptune come out of hiding one last time?

For young Reggie, just thirteen when her mother disappeared, life holds more questions than answers. Whereas the severed right hand of her mom showed up on the doorstep of the police department just like all the others whose bodies where all left on public display days later, her mother’s body was never found. Now a successful architect trying to get on with her life, she is thrown a curve-ball when a call from the hospital reveals her mother has been admitted.

Apparently her mother has been a transient, living in homeless shelters for years. How did she get back home, and why did she not die like all the others. As she begins to ask questions, her best friend from her days in high school, Tara, reappears in their life and takes the job as care-giver for her mother only to be kidnapped and her hand placed on the police department’s steps just like all the others. In a race to save Tara’s life Reggie puts her own life on the line.

Trouble is brewing in this small town. Evil is stirring up the cauldron, slowly adding ingredients such as red-herrings and false suspicions as slowly the pot comes to a boil. With the turn of every page you expect to be totally blown away. McMahon is at her best as she raises the temperature and the tempo until it all spills over and leaves you gasping in surprise

The Mists of Adrianna by Roger Woodbury - a review

 

With nothing more than a passing interest in Porsche two people, Colleen, a woman stranded on the side of the road, and her prince in shining armor who rescues her from her plight, form a relationship. As the friendship develops and he has his first date since his wife died we can see love begin to bloom.

They say when you are so blindly, madly in love you can’t see clear enough to understand what is really going on. Others see things you don’t or won’t believe, even when explained so as the woman’s background starts to surface we, as the reader, see what the protagonist seems to miss.

Learning that her father was a Cold-War spook, that her parents were killed in an accident, that the summer camps she attended as a teenager where geared to train her for a life as a spy and that she is on the run from a drug-dealing Columbian husband, would throw up red flags for most of us, however he stumbles blindly on. When we begin to wonder if the stranded motorist ploy was a plot to pull him in and finding his house is bugged by factions of the government who are keeping an eye on his lady-friend, nothing seems to deter him from developing the relationship; she is after all the most beautiful woman ever to be attracted to him

In this first book of a planned trilogy the author treats us to a fast-paced debut novel full of intrigue and danger. As in ‘Rebecca’, the classic story from du Maurier we are never given the name of our adventurer, however this trick works so well that I did not realize the absence of a name until I began the review process, so bravo Mr. Woodbury

Shadow Walker by J E Gurley - a review

When Lucifer and the fallen angels warred, creating chaos on the face of the earth, the world’s surface changed beyond recognition. Deep within the earth’s core, hidden in the shadows, what God had created as the perfect transition from death to a spiritual life, what we humans refer to as Purgatory, became filled with demons and their followers, unfortunate souls who became Minions to the Overseers and the road to forever life became a path toward Hell. Hidden deep in the tunnels that traversed the Shadow Realm, the arch-angel Gabriel lay trapped, a tortured soul prisoner until humans would rescue him to let Christ’s second-coming commence.

The Catholic church hired Shadow Walkers, a handful of the chosen, men who found not just the calling in the church but exhibited one other trait that the rest of us mere humans would never know. They had the ability to walk in thebshadows, through the doors into the darkness on the other side to converse with those souls waiting to transition to a better life, to take and bring messages and hope to those back home, and to find a way to take advantage of and discover the secrets to releasing Gabriel.

And then there was Tanner… A whiskey guzzling smuggler of whatever needed to be taken or bought from the Purgs, a whoring despot of a man who could be counted on to turn a blind-eye. He was also well armed and loved to hunt down the minions and blow them away. He had no faith in anything but his own ability to save himself, and yes he’d take money from the Church occasionally. He wasn’t picky as long as it was green and spent well. When he is sent on a mission to rescue the brother of a young Oriental woman, his whole perspective on life, death, Hell, and faith are tested over and over again. When the minions cross over into his earthly life and attack his loved ones, he hits them where it hurts. He follows the dreams he has been having to a new higher calling. Can he get to the world beyond Shadow Realm and bring down Satan and his demons? In a well written, street-tough guide to the netherworld, Gurley holds your attention from page one, as you too will convert in this religiously glorified tale of horror.