Whisper in the Dark-Robert Gregory Browne

Whisper in the Dark
Robert Gregory Browne
St. Martin’s, Feb 3 2009, $7.99
ISBN: 0312358660

A taxi driver almost runs down a naked woman covered with blood; she attacks him with a pair of scissors. Not far away in a run down apartment, Detective Frank Blackburn finds blood all over the place with a brutalized male corpse in the middle. When he hears of the Jane Doe, he rushes over to see her before the ambulance takes her to the hospital. He finds her incoherent and violent; he assumes she is in shock from having witnessed the murder in the apartment.

When the medical examiner looks at the body he sees :) on the inside of the lip made by a Power Blast cauterizing tool. The serial killer Vincent is back in Ocean City, California after being away for a year following his last debacle: eight dead women. His signature is cutting off the left ear of his victim. When psychiatrist Dr. Michael Tolan examines Jane Doe, he freaks out as she no longer has tracks and her eyes are changed colors from what was on her chart; she is turning into his beloved wife Abby who died one year ago today as Vincent’s eighth victim. The serial killer is playing with Tolan’s mind because he apparently did not kill Abby and wants to punish Michael for giving him credit for something he did not do; Vincent believes it is more likely Michael killed his wife as he suffered a blackout during the time she was murdered. Blackburn needs to get to Tolan before he becomes the next dead model of Vincent Van Gogh.

This is a pulse pounding electrifying thriller in which nothing is at it first seems. Jane Doe is a homeless justice who is being used by a borrower, in this case Abby, to try to communicate with Michael. Even her bone structure changes as she begins to take on the shape of Talon’s late wife. Blackburn diligently works the case with everything he can muster; yet remains unaware that the supernatural is involved as he strictly hunts for a human serial killer. Robert Gregory Browne writes an exciting paranormal police procedural that will have readers wondering if Vincent comes from beyond the grave too.

Harriet Klausner