Detective Alex Mills turns to psychic Gus Parker to help him solve a series of baffling murders perpetrated by a deranged killer who leaves his victims’ bodies and taunting clues in the desert surrounding Phoenix, AZ.Someone is filling the desert caves around Phoenix with bodies–a madman who, in a taunting ritual, is leaving behind a record of his crimes etched into the stone. With no leads and … With no leads and no suspects, Detective Alex Mills sees a case spinning out of control. City leaders want the case solved yesterday, and another detective wants to elbow Mills out of the way. As the body count rises, Mills turns to Gus Parker, an “intuitive medium” whose murky visions sometimes point to real clues. It’s an unorthodox approach, but Mills is desperate.
When Parker is brought to the crime scenes, he sees visions of a house on fire and a screaming child. But what does it mean? He struggles to interpret his psychic messages, knowing that the killer is one step ahead and that in this vast desert, the next murder could happen anywhere. Nor does it help that he’s always been unlucky in love and now finds himself the prey of a lovelorn stalker. She is throwing him off his game.
Someone will win this contest, and both Parker and Mills fear it will be the cunning, ruthless killer, who is able to use the trackless landscape as a cover for his brutal crimes.
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This was a great find and the Parker/Mills books are turning into a favorite series very quickly (there are currently two books and – spoiler alert – both are very well done). I was contacted by the then-publisher, Seventh Street Books, about reviewing the newest title (Dig Your Grave) and while I was intrigued, I have a habit of not reading later series books if I haven’t read the earlier ones, so politely declined – until they offered the first book as well. Since I was intrigued by the premise (a psychic and detective working together) and the somewhat unusual (for me) setting of Phoenix, Arizona, I agreed to give the books a look.
I’m so glad I did!
Cooper has managed to create a world of collaborative murder-solving between a psychic (Gus Parker) and a detective (Alex Mills) that reads intelligently, without judgment, and with an interesting amount of insight into the interaction between private and professional lives in two very different characters. The personalities are a lot of what make the book so enjoyable. Gus is, self-proclaimed, a bit of an aging surfer dude. His relaxed attitude, attention to New Age-y self-help like meditation and mantras, and intuitive style are a great foil to Alex’s harder, more traditional tough-guy cop. Neither fully plays to type – these aren’t stereotypes come to life on the page, they are living, breathing characters with all the attendant inconsistencies, flaws, and frailties of full-blooded people. Cooper does a fantastic job presenting them and their actions in this light, and their depth and breadth play out in great detail as the book – and murders – unfold.
The writing is very good. Cooper has a very easy-going, engaging writing style. I fell right into the world he has created from the get-go, and didn’t want to leave it by the end of the book. The pacing is spot-on, the twist was one I didn’t see coming (although in hindsight maybe should have, a little bit), and the tension was real and gripping throughout. The supporting cast is very well crafted also, on both sides. On Alex’s side – from his wife to his compatriots (and foils) at the police station/city hall – and Gus’s – specifically his mentor Beatrice (one of my personal favorites) and his slate of clients (both at the imaging center and his psychic ones) – the characters are really what drives this story forward and makes it such an enjoyable read.
The murders were interesting also, don’t get me wrong. The petroglyphs and murderer’s backstory were great and unusual angles that I found fascinating and original, and the teasing plotting out of the reveals and misdirection were well handled and definitely contributed to the story, but the characterization was so strong that it really drove everything home for me.
I’m definitely looking for more from Steven Cooper!
Thanks to Seventh Street books for my review copy of this book.