Love's Redemption
Kimberly Kaye TerryRomantic suspense
Available from New Concepts Publishing
ISBN: 1-58608-804-1
December 2005
| This is one of my favorite types of stories. It is a psychological murder mystery thriller with erotic true love on the side. I also love a mystery that I'm not able to see through right away. Ms. Terry is a superb writer. She'd have to be especially talented to keep all the complicated plot lines straight in her head. It was as if her characters took on lives of their own and ran with them.
A serial killer is stalking San Antonio. The police suspect it is a woman. The killer targets the johns of prostitutes, sodomizes them with a blunt object, kills them and buries them in shallow graves. Many of the murdered victims have been among the rich, famous and well-respected members of the community. We are able to see into the killer Jamie's mind and we witness a lot throughout the book. We just don't know who Jamie is. One prostitute is murdered. The police believe she stumbled upon a murder in progress. Her foster sister, Dr. Maya Richardson, is a psychologist who runs Imari House, a safe home for prostitutes to get out of the business, with plenty of counseling and everything they need to rebuild normal lives. She meets Detective Mark Halstan when she goes to the police station to identify her foster sister's body. As soon as Mark sees her sitting outside Lieutenant Hernandez's office, he falls for her. He's the one to accompany her to the morgue. He comforts her and befriends her and Maya becomes a consultant on the case. The FBI sends in Special Agent Nicolai Montgomery, a former profiler who works on a team specializing in this kind of case. Only Mark finds out that Nicolai is an auditory psychic. He can touch the scene and hear the conversations that took place before the murder. They still can't figure out how the killer stays one step ahead. Maya has never trusted another man enough to share her body with him. She and Mark build a special relationship and he teaches her about her sensual side. The killer has Maya on a pedestal but could at any moment turn on her and kill her too, especially since Mark's clothes in Maya's apartment angered the killer. I can't rave enough about what a great book this is. Everything about it is excellent. The love scenes are tender and erotic. The suspense is palpable, especially at the end when we don't know if they'll get to Maya in time. The mystery and the last minute plot twists are artfully executed. The story pulls you in from the very first page and holds you in it all the way to the end. This is romantic suspense at its best.
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Reviewer: Karen H. |
