She Treads Softly: Death Behind Every Door

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Death Behind Every Door

Death Behind Every Door by Heather Graham
5/21/24; 336 pages
MIRA Books
The Blackbird Flies #1

Death Behind Every Door by Heather Graham is a recommended paranormal procedural following the European group of FBI agents from the special Krewe of Hunters group.

FBI special agent Luke Kendrick discovers evidence at a crime scene in London that members/acolytes of the H. H. Holmes Society are active in Great Britain. (Holmes, aka Herman Mudgett, was America's first serial killer from the eighteenth-century.) It seems that the network of killers are active in Scotland where Luke quickly travels to join Special Agent Carly MacDonald to investigate Graystone Castle. Now a B and B, it seems that several guests have been disappearing after staying at the castle. Luke and Carly quickly solve this outbreak and move on to others.

This novel rushes from one investigation to another where they quickly catch the guilty, pass them on to local authorities, and run off to the next suspected location with barely time to inhale between scenes. The investigations are not very nuanced with careful research, planning, and field work as one would find in most procedurals. Once the guilty are caught, the two gallop off to the next suspected area of activity.

There is plenty of talk about historical events in Scotland, which was interesting, and several ghost who help them in their stings, which wasn't so interesting and actually a minus for me. Grahams Krewe of Hunters series, which this is a spin off from, is not something that I've been following so this novel does just jump into action assuming the reader has background from the original series.

The characters are rather lightly developed. The romance between them seemed rather hasty and pointless. Personally, I would have preferred the professionals, you know, act professionally. The one thing this has going for it is that the entertainment and action moves quickly for those who just want to get to the arrests/captures quickly. Thanks to MIRA Books for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

No comments:

Post a Comment

John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.