Waking The Dead-Heather Graham

Waking The Dead

Heather Graham

Mira, Jan 27 2015, $7.99

ISBN: 9780778317449

In 1816 Henry Sebastian Hubert enjoys “year without summer” off Lake Geneva with friends George, Lord Byron; Percy and Mary Shelley; and Claire Godwin.  As part of an artistic contest among the friends, Henry paints the haunting Ghosts in the Mind portraying a murder.

In present day New Orleans Danni Cafferty visits her friend Niles Villiers’ Image Me This Gallery.  Ecstatic Niles shows her why he is elated; he received 100 computer-generated giclee prints of Ghosts of the Mind in which the current owner of the original resides in The Big Easy.  Meanwhile former cop turned private investigator Michael Quinn returns from Texas to look into horrific harrowing homicides.  Soon Quinn joined by Cafferty start to wonder if the Hubert painting is the malevolent cause.

The second Cafferty & Quinn (and Wolf) urban fantasy (see Let The Dead Sleep) is a taut paranormal murder mystery with a powerful cast entrenched in a vividly haunting atmospheric New Orleans and a seemingly seeped in evil Swiss castle.  The case hooks readers from the opening nineteenth century Swiss scene and keeps its hold until the climatic confrontation.  Although that final face to face fight is marred by the killer’s boasting soliloquy (pet peeve of mine), this remains an enjoyable paranormal thriller.

Harriet Klausner