Genny Madoc is a psychic who lives in the Smokey Mountains, just outside the town of Cherokee Pointe, Tennessee. One night she has a horrible vision of a young woman being sacrificed on a ceremonial alter. She calls her cousin Jacob, who's the town sheriff, for help but he isn't able to reach the girl in time. No one in Cherokee Pointe has ever seen anything like this murder and they have very few clues until FBI agent Dallas Sloane arrives and offers his assistance.
He's come to Cherokee Pointe because the murder resembles a number of others that he's been investigating. Dallas is convinced that he's on the trail of a serial killer who kills five victims in close secession and then moves on to a new location. In each group of five the first four victims are chosen at random, only the fifth victims are similar. This makes it difficult to see the pattern and Dallas' colleges are convinced that he's imagining things. His beloved niece was the fourth victim in one of the groupings and people are convinced that grief has warped his judgment. The murder in Cherokee Pointe is the first in a new grouping, which gives Dallas the best chance he's had to catch the killer.
Dallas believes that the murder is the only reason he's come to Cherokee Pointe, but Genny knows there's more. She had a vision of Dallas too, and she knows that he's her soul mate. What she doesn't know is how that will change her life, whether or not she'll be able to explain things to Dallas and how he'll feel about it if she does. Genny's concerns about the future multiply when she realizes that she has formed a link with the killer and that he has chosen her as the fifth victim. It will take both Genny's abilities and Dallas' skill to stop the killer before he completes his pattern and slips away again.
I chose this book in part because of the location. I've been to the Great Smokey Mountains and the area is beautiful, but I rarely see it used as a book setting. I also thought the premise was interesting and had great potential. Unfortunately the book failed to live up to that potential. Dallas worked well as the driven, skeptical hero, but Genny was another story.
Genny is the standard cliched psychic whose gifts are conveniently limited in exactly the way needed to drive the story. She's also a Mary Sue. Everyone loves her and she sees the best in everyone. She even uses her gifts to charm wild animals, including a wolf who she feeds by hand. At one point animals save her from the bad guy in a scene that read like an extremely violent version of a Disney cartoon. Animals helped Snow White clean house for the seven dwarfs, made a ballgown for Cinderella---and saved Genny from a homicidal maniac. I rolled my eyes so hard I'm lucky they didn't stick like that. The romance between Genny and Dallas didn't improve the situation. I'm not fond of stories about predestined love and instant connection. I don't enjoy it when a couple is seemingly in love for no reason whatsoever and this was definitely one of those stories.
The secondary plot took up a lot of the book and it was also unsatisfying. Genny's best friend Jasmine is a successful businesswoman in Cherokee Pointe. She owns the local motel and a restaurant and club. Her love life isn't doing nearly as well as her businesses. Years ago she was involved with a boy named Jamie, the scion of the local gentry. Because Jazzy's family was poor his family saw her as trash and forbade the relationship. Jamie wouldn't risk his inheritance to marry Jazzy, so he left her behind when he went away to college. He still likes to use her as a booty call whenever he returns home for a visit though. Jazzy always turns him down, but then gives in when he persists.
The problem with that isn't really that it makes Jazzy look dumb for allowing herself to be used. I understand how she could get stuck on Jamie and be unable to resist him, even as he goes through a string of fiances. The problem is that Jazzy admits that the attraction isn't just sexual. She also likes Jamie for his money. She justifies this because she grew up poor and now wants the good life. I can understand that, but it still makes her seem at best mercenary and at worst like she's trying to trade sex for cash. That makes her objections to people thinking of her as trashy or treating her like she's a whore a little problematic.
For me all of these character issues overshadowed the thriller plot, which didn't turn out to be anywhere near as compelling as I had expected. The slight paranormal twist did little to lift the villain above run of the mill. In the end this book simply failed to live up to it's premise.
Grade: D+
This is the fist book in a trilogy. I picked up all three books at the library at the same time so even though this one was bad I decided to try the next one to see if the series would improve.
The Last To Die is Jazzy's story. Genny has a vision of Jamie being murdered and the crime being a threat to Jazzy. She doesn't want to believe that her friend could kill her ex, but the vision isn't clear and she can't be sure. Genny knows that Jamie doesn't believe in her gift and won't heed any warning that she would give him. She does warn Jazzy to stay away from him at all costs and she, Dallas and Jacob create a plan to keep Jazzy safe. Unfortunately their plan fails and when Jamie is murdered Jazzy has no alibi. Her friends then have to solve the murder in order to keep her from going to prison for a crime she didn't commit.
I suspected the book would be a DNF when the big plan to protect Jazzy completely failed to do the obvious---never leave her alone. I tried to overlook that, but couldn't overlook some major problems with the real killer. To avoid spoilers I'll simply say that a person suffering from the severe mental illness Ms Barton describes couldn't possibly devise an intricate plan to commit murder, act normal enough to lure Jamie to his death and carefully avoid leaving trace evidence at the scene.
It's a shame that The Last To Die wasn't a better book because the hero, Caleb McCord, was really good. He just wasn't good enough to carry the rest of the mess.
Grade: DNF
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