Diana Rowland - Sins of the Demon

This is Rowland's third book in the Kara Gillian series. It's fun, plain and simple.

Kara is a cop, a demon summoner and a mystery. Just when I think I've grasped the character, and the plot, Rowland shakes everything up, just like a snow globe, and I'm suddenly looking at the story from a whole new angle. The writing is excellent, detailed, consistent and with just enough description that my own imagination can click in. It's good to find an author who doesn't think her reader's are idiots, that's become too rare with all the electronic publishing. People are writing garbage and it's getting published, warts and all, in the race to have more and more books out there.

Poor Kara is dealing with deaths that have an odd link to her past in this one. Being a homicide detective you think she'd know how to hide the bodies better... of course it's not her, you can't have an evil heroine! So once again Kara calls on demons to find out the truth about her past and the past of her friends and the why of what is happening. No-one is who they seem in this series, I know, that sounds like the worst cliche and should probably be followed by the words 'this is the not to be missed episode', but for once it's true. Rowland is just that good at twisting the story until you get to the conclusion & your brain goes 'OMGWTFBBQ!'.

Wendy Roberts - Dead And Kicking (2009)

I'm enjoying this series, even though I do not much like the personality of the main character - Sadie Novak, crime scene cleaner and ghost whisperer. It almost felt like there should be an exclamation point after that, but she really does leave me slightly underwhelmed. So no exclamation point for her. One for me, though!

Seriously - it's a fantastic series and this is the third book in. I really like the plot. It's mildly scary and definitely hard to pick the real baddies - rare for most crime books. I love the rabbit, Hairy - a very fitting name, and I liked Sadie much better in books one and two. She was less perfect, more frightened and uncertain, but still determined to do the right thing. Until book three - she's still frightened, but she's bordering on the kind of arrogant perfection that makes your teeth ache. I hope book four brings her back down-to-earth, so to speak, and returns her to her bumbling, anxious, less-than-perfect self. Honestly, a ghost is trying to kill you and you worry about eating a biscuit because you haven't jogged in a few days? Puh-leez! Focus girl!

So who is Sadie? She's a 30-something who can speak to ghosts and send them on their merry way to whatever afterlife awaits them. Unfortunately she often has to solve their murders before they'll leave - and Seattle seems to have a lot of murders. Which is how Sadie, the crime-scene cleaning lady (honestly was her name a coincidence or is the author a John Farnham fan?) tends to meet her often less-than-friendly ghosts.

How did she get this curse/gift? It's passed down through the family. When the current ghost whisperer dies a new one is called. It's like vampire slayers - only you often look like you're talking to and fighting yourself. Sadie's Uncle, who spent most of his life in an asylum, passed it to Sadie's brother Brian, who promptly killed himself, leaving Sadie reigning ghostbuster to dead Seattlites.

Honestly, try Book 1 - The Remains of the Dead, it won't disappoint.