| Haunting Refrain Posted: Kate McGuire divorced her wealthy politician husband and set up a photography studio, slowly gaining business over the past year. Deciding to try something fun, she joins a parapsychology group at a local college. It's entertaining, until she gets a vision of an angry man strangling a young woman - a vision that is so vivid that she feels as though she is the one being strangled. After the professor running the group - Martin Carver - checks the registration on the item Kate was holding, it is discovered that it had belonged to a young woman named Kelly Landrum, who has gone missing several days before. Venice Ashburton, a professional psychic, receives a similar vision. When Kate refuses to go to the police, Venice decides to take matters into her own hands and contacts John Gerrad, a reporter, who meets with Venice and Kate and then mentions them in an article about the missing girl. While Kate is upset about people finding out she is involved with a psychic research group because she is afraid it will negatively impact her business, what she should have been concerned about was what the killer would think when reading the article - because now the killer thinks that Kate and Venice know more than they do - and plans to do something about it ...
Ellis Vidler has created a very well-crafted mystery/suspense in "Haunting Refrain." Several good suspects are kept in the mix through the book and while I did figure out whodunit, I wasn't absolutely sure I was correct until the denouement. I was also impressed by the fact that, up until the end, the heroine was shown to be pretty sensible, taking the advice from the police and from Gerrard for her own protection. Of course, then she did go and do something stupid ... but it was a necessary part of the plot to move things forward properly so I'll let it go. It was just refreshing to have a heroine that was willing to listen to reason and behave in a somewhat logical manner as far as protecting herself went, once she realized she was in danger. I also liked the fact that Ms. Vidler did such a good job at giving each of her characters such an individual voice - having recently read a book in which all the characters sounded the same, it was nice to see this done so well. Overall I was highly impressed with this book and fans of mystery, suspense and/or thrillers should love this book. Definitely check it out. |
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