Blood Game

August 10, 2009
Bestseller Johansen's latest Eve Duncan forensics thriller features an all-too-mortal vampire. Fresh off a multiple child homicide case (Quicksand
), Eve discovers a blood-stained goblet in her refrigerator. The goblet closely resembles one found with the bloodless body of Nancy Jo Norris, a U.S. senator's 19-year-old daughter, the victim of a wannabe Dracula who ultimately thirsts for Eve. In a paranormal twist, Joe Quinn, Eve's FBI love interest, appears to have contracted psychic powers from Megan Blair, introduced in Pandora's Daughter
, and can now see dead people—Nancy Jo and Eve's daughter, Bonnie, to be exact. The ghosts guide the search for the serial sucker, complete with corny gothic monologues. Johansen risks alienating some readers as the series slips deeper into the supernatural, but diehards will be pleased Eve at last finds some peace in her ever-growing bond with Joe. 500,000 first printing.

September 15, 2009
Johansen (Deadlock, 2009, etc.) stirs psychics, an apprentice vampire and some unsettled ghosts into a bubbling pot of balderdash.

Near the end of forensic sculptor Eve Duncan's latest case, she turns to Hamburger Helper to make dinner. It's one of the few descriptive details here, and an apt one for a tale concocted from fragments, clichs, clipped sentences and stilted dialogue. Back in Atlanta (which for all the sense of place Johansen provides might as well be the lost continent of Atlantis), Eve is contacted by a nearly hysterical Megan Blair, who fears that when she clutched Eve during a recent investigation, she may have transmitted psychic powers. Yes, Megan did. Eve's daughter Bonnie, missing for nine years, now appears to her periodically for a cloying moment or two. And Eve's partner, Joe Quinn, has apparently also caught the ESP bug: He begins to see Nancy Jo Norris, a senator's daughter whose nude body has been discovered, her throat slit. However skeptical of the supernatural, stalwart Joe, a former FBI agent, knows a potentially good source when he sees one, so he begrudgingly teams with Nancy Jo to find her murderer. The culprit is Kevin Jelak, who aspires to full-fledged vampire status. To achieve that, he must find and ingest high-quality, high-protein blood, and he thinks Eve and her adopted daughter Jane offer just that. As a calling card, Kevin leaves a goblet filled with blood he sucked from Nancy Jo in Eve's refrigerator. In the meantime, he takes several other female victims, their blood at least good enough to keep him going. Devoted to her mother, Jane offers to serve as bait to draw Jelak into the open. Eve will have none of it. She will place herself on the altar of possible sacrifice. Some suspense arises as we wait to see how much more preposterous the plot will become.

Not even Hamburger Helper could rescue this overdone hash.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2009
Before world-renowned forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and her companion Joe Quinn, formerly of the FBI and now on the Atlanta police force, have time to recover from the traumatic events surrounding a mass child murderer (Quicksand, 2008), another killer enters their lives. Eve and Joe have been together ever since her beloved child, Bonnie, was murdered, and clues to the case are dwindling. Joe is called in to investigate the murder of Nancy Jo Norris, a college student and senators daughter. The victims blood has been drained and a ceremonial goblet placed in her hands, a modus operandi that points to the serial killer Kevin Jelak, whom Eve suspects may have been her daughters killer. When a goblet of blood appears in Eves refrigerator, she knows that Jelak is after her. Indeed, the murderer believes that the blood of the slain will transform him into an all-powerful being, and he is saving Eve for his final infusion. Johansen is becoming a master of the macabre and paranormal thriller, and her latest riveting Eve Duncan tale has it all, from ghosts and secret cults to supernatural avengers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)