Having a broken wrist caused a real bad attitude, and FINALLY, I’ve made it to therapy. Now the ulnar nerve is having fits. SIGH! Back in the splint off and on, and I still have the problems with blood flow. One stupid little fall. A non-event. What a pain in the rump. Still, the enforced idleness came when a bunch of books I’d been waiting for got released.
- Title: Dead on the Delta
- Author: Stacey Jay
- Type: Paranormal UF/alternate reality
- Genre: noir style paranormal mystery
- Sub-genre: killer faries, drug runners, and family secrets on the bayou
- My Grade: B- (3.8*)
- Rating: PG-13
- Length and price: Novel – about 90,000+ $7.99
- Where Available: Available at most bookstores
- FTC Disclosure: purchased from online bookstore
This was a semi-original story by a new author. If certain backstory elements and world building had gelled just a bit better, this could have been an A. The writing style and quality lacked some polish, but the atmosphere was there. The story is centered around the murder of a small girl, thought to be one of a string of such murders, and it hits close to home for Annebelle. Annabelle Lee, is seeking forgetfulness and oblivion at the bottom of the bottle way too often, but her unique talents – she’s one of the rare immunes who won’t die from mutant fairy bites – her affair with the too-good-to-be-true boyfriend, police detective Caine Cooper, and the appearance of ex-fiance Hitch as an FBI technical expert with his female partner/agent – who is his current fiance, was kind of too much coincidence for one book.
Annie keeps reminding herself she’s just a special kind of crime scene technician,med school dropout, and someone who deserves to be punished. Her determined efforts at self-destruction for an incident in her past, are at odds with her unwanted sense of obligation to the murdered child. the story unwinds rather like a choppy homemade movie, without smooth segues and criss-crossing various plot elements in a distracting style. The ending brings an interesting twist, not so much to the crime, but to what happens to Annabelle and what she will become.
Was Dead on the Delta worth $7.99? Yes – for any fan of the noir style. The writing is no match for authors like Lawrence Sanders or Dennis Lehanne, but a decent read. I just hope the authors style smooths out a bit in future. (more…)
