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FIVE STAR REVIEWS FOR ALONG CAME A DEMON
Bring on the Rest of the story by
Drew Dale Daniel Bryenton author of Fields of Elysium and Chains of Tartarus.
When Tiff
Banks is asked to help the police with their investigations, it's never good news for the victim... because it means that
they're already dead!
She's not a forensic psychologist or a crime-scene investigator - her talents are much more unique
and bizarre. Unlike the many charlatans and pretenders on TV Tiff really CAN talk to the dead - the violently deceased whisper
to her, and that can make it difficult to lead a normal life!
Enter a sinister world just beyond the everyday streets
and homes of quiet little Clarion - a world inhabited by the souls of the slain, awaiting justice for their murders. And other,
darker beings not of the mortal Earth... things that Tiff calls Demons, but who have their own Machiavellian hierarchies and
intrigues.
And when the ghost of a drowned woman breaks all the rules of the afterlife and leaves the place of her death,
be prepared for two worlds to collide. Suddenly speaking to the dead is the least of Tiff Banks' problems, and the Demons
are closing in....
This is a great read - punchy, engaging and flowing prose which outlines a novel approach to the psi-thriller
genre. Plenty of twists and turns, humor and tension, action and intrigue... and the best part is, this is just the first
of a planned series!
Go on, get this into your hard drive, your book shelf, and your head!
Ghosts whisper to her: mystery and intrigue abound.s
Whisper to Her: Mystery and Intrigue Abound - Part I
by LK Gardner-Griffie author of Misfit McCabe
I have
been an avid mystery fan for much of my life. I read before going to sleep every night and the books that usually make up
that reading material are mysteries of the cozy type. Agatha Christie, P D James, Elizabeth Peters, Ngaio Marsh, Sara Paretsky,
Martha Grimes, and the list goes on. When I saw that Linda Welch had requested a review for her psi-fi mystery, Along Came
A Demon, I leapt at the chance to read and review it. I was not disappointed.
Tiff Banks, nicknamed the
Ice Queen by the Clarion police department for her tall stature and ice blonde hair, works as a consultant for the police
in murder cases. She has told them that she is a psychic, but in actuality, she sees dead people as flesh and blood and they
whisper to her. Tiff, who hates to be called Tiffany because of the image that projects, was orphaned as a baby, grew up in
a variety of foster homes, and always felt she was a little different than everyone else. Happier being by herself than with
a group of people, Tiff left Utah as soon as she was able and went from place to place and job to job. Until, after landing
in San Francisco, boom, out of nowhere she started seeing and being able to talk to dead people. She returned to Utah to the
small town of Clarion in the hopes that there wouldn't be too many murdered people trying to get her attention. Unfortunately
for her, she moved into a house where there were two ghosts in residence, as well as two who lived on her street. So much
for trying to get away from them.
Along Came A Demon starts
with Tiff being told by Jack and Mel, her ghost couple, that there is a naked woman dripping on her front grass. Tiff is cranky
that she has to deal with a dead person before she can even get her morning coffee
“A naked wet woman
in the garden. Dripping wet.”
I sighed and turned to lean against the counter. I would rather she were an escaped
lunatic wandered into the neighborhood than what she really was. Although why she was wet on that chilly November morning
was anyone’s guess.
“I’ve been watching her from the bedroom window,”
Mel said, coming through the door from the hallway, mussing up her permanently mussed red hair with one hand. “She’s
been standing there, wet, for half an hour.”
Not a disorientated stranger in the wrong back yard. Not an escaped
loony. Worse. One of them. I sighed again. I did not want to deal with it that early in the morning. “She’ll have
to wait till after I’ve had my coffee.”
Tiff was trying to figure out how the naked woman came to be on
her grass as usually, the dead are bound to where they passed. Lindy Marchant passed away in the apartments behind Tiff's
house, and she is concerned about her son. Tiff promises to find out about her son so that hopefully, Lindy will leave her
alone, as she doesn't want to live with a naked woman in her orchard. The only problem is that once she checks with the Clarion
police department, it appears that Lindy Marchant had no son.
Not willing to give up, Tiff
requests to search the apartment. Under the refrigerator she finds a drawing by Lawrence, which is given to the police to
goad them into searching for the missing child. So starts the twisted case which involves the missing child Lawrence, which
blossoms into a nationwide case where over 200 boys born on November 9, 2002 had gone missing.
In addition to being
able to see the murdered, Tiff can also see the otherworldly, whom she had heard about from her psychic friend, Lynn.
Lynn was trying to be ethnically
sensitive when she call them the Otherworldy. That was too much of a mouthful for me - I called them demons. Not that I thought
they were creatures from Hell - I didn’t know what they were or where they came from. They could be aliens from outer
space for all I knew. But with their pointed teeth and glimmering eyes, demon seemed a fitting description.
And a
little later on, Welch provides some more description of her demons.
I would never call a demon cute.
Incredibly handsome. Charming. Deadly. Not to be trusted. According to Lynn, they did not blatantly lie but could do so by
omission when it suited them. And you could ask them a question and they would answer in such a way that, without exactly
lying, they didn’t give you the truth.
Tiff stays as far away from these demons as she can, but to her chagrin
is partnered with Royal Mortenson, of the Clarion PD to work on the missing child case, and he is a demon. While wishing that
she could shoot him instead of partnering with him, Tiff becomes suspicious of Royal, who has been moving from police department
to police department, never staying too long in one location. She suspects that he may be involved in this missing children
case from an inside perspective.
Linda Welch pens
a engaging tale, full of action and adventure. A definite page turner full of twists to keep you guessing until the end.
Originially reviewed for the Lulu Book Review.
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