Matters of the Blood
Maria Lima
Juno, Sep 2008, $7.99
ISBN: 9780809573035

Few know the dead like Keira Kelly does know the dead. Keira Kelly perhaps knows the dead better than the living. Keira is part of a clan of paranormal people although she prefers to live outside amongst the normals. Currently she lives in Rio Seco, Texas if one can call residing there as living. She watches over her cousin Marty Nelson, who not only failed to inherit the family gift making him a pathetic purebred human outcast, but works as he puts it -in a dead-end job as a mortician.

As Keira begins to learn what her powers are, someone is beheading and draining the blood of animals at The Wild Moon resort. Keira believes the culprit is inhuman. However, though she does some tremulous investigation, she is not committed until Marty is murdered with all his blood emptied from his corpse. As her former boyfriend Sheriff Carlton Larson investigates and makes it clear he wants her back, Keira visits Wild Moon only to find Adam Walker, someone she once desired, owns the place. Keira wonders could he have killed Marty because the mortician was learning the truth about the new resort not filled with many guests.

The cast makes this horror mystery into a one sitting read as fans will anticipate every chilling bump that sends the heroine into frighten mode. The story line is fast-paced with no one quite like they initially seem as most of the townsfolk are not purebred human. Readers will appreciate this superb paranormal whodunit with a touch of romance with plenty of interwoven subplots that will elate fans of various sub-genres, but the center holding this superb tale together is the likable Keira who makes the abnormal seem so normal.

Harriet Klausner