Doom with a View-Victoria Laurie

Doom with a View
Victoria Laurie
Obsidian, Sep 2009, $6.99
ISBN: 9780451227799

Psychic Abby Cooper and private investigator Candice share an office where they meet their clients. They are a formidable team who has made a positive impression on FBI Special Agent In Charge Bill Gaston. He asks them to come to DC to work on a task force with other agents headed by politically connected Brice Harrington, who opposes Abby on the team because he believes psychics are con artists.

To prove his point to the others, Brice constructs a biased test, but to his shock, Abby passes rather easily; finding a murder-suicide in the house next door to where one of the tests were held. They earn their place on the task force searching for three missing college students whose only connection seems to be each one has a parent in a political office. They later learn that they all attended with their parents the same conference two years ago. Abby leans from looking at pictures of the missing students that two are dead and the other is dying. Abby’s personal crew of spirit guides escort her and Candice in directions that yield clues as to whom is behind the deadly abductions. When a fourth student is kidnapped, Abby, Candice and Brice team up as the latter is now a firm believer.

Victoria Laurie has written a new spellbinding psychic eye whodunit made refreshed by the heroine, used to non-believers in general, on a team made up of non-believing veteran law enforcement skeptics with only her partner knowing what she can do. She changes their mocking opinions when her predictions prove true. The audience will admire the courageous Abby as she diligently works hard at trying to understand what her crew are telling her. At times the story line is amusing especially when Abby constantly trumps Brice who is a believer in the by the SOP investigation until she converts him, but neither lose perspective that the surviving kid(s) comes first.

Harriet Klausner