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The Closet - Jac Wright

30/7/2014

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4/5

Book Description
Love is a battlefield. Who will get out of it alive?
Harry Duncan Wood runs a hotel in the historic city of Bath with his beautiful young wife. When he falls in love with Mill House, an old greystone farmhouse on the banks of river Avon among the soaring hills of Somerset, and sets about moving his family there, the first appearances of the cracks in the marriage take him by surprise. Is his wife seeing another man? Duncan needs to get to the bottom of the affairs for his own sanity. Sometimes, however, ignorance is bliss and will also keep everybody alive.

My review
'The Closet' by Jac Wright is a very clever and well-written short story.

Harry Duncan Wood runs a hotel in the city of Bath together with his young second wife Carrie. They live in the same hotel, but Duncan has recently puchased and is in the process of renovating a large, run-down, old Mill House in a desolate place in the hills, with the intention of converting it to a hotel and to come to live in it.

At the beginning of the story, Duncan is on his way to the Mill House in quite a foul mood. He is suspecting that his wife Carrie is having an affair under his nose. He has a plan to find out if this is true or not. He falsely tells her that he is going to France for 5 days on business. Soon after he overhears her on an excited telephone conversation with someone planning to spend some time together with this person in the Mill House while he's abroad.

That morning, Duncan leaves no clues of his arrival in the Mill House and he hides in the bedroom closet waiting for Carrie and this other person's arrival. What happens then? Is he correct in his suspicions? Is she really betraying him or is it just his overworking imagination? Who is this other person? How will this story end?

I really enjoyed myself reading this book as it is extemely well-written. I could almost hear the wind howling and the sound of the stream as it passes beneath the Mill House. My only complaint is that I thought it would be a longer story; it was in fact extremely short. When I arrived at 50% of the ebook, thinking I was half down the story, it suddenly ended and the other half of the book was just information about and the starting chapters of the author's novel 'The Reckless Engineer'.

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Good Tidings - Terri Reid

27/7/2014

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5/5

Book Description
Mary O’Reilly, Private Investigator, is decorating her office for the holiday season when the newly installed bell over her door jingles. She looks over to see a six year-old boy standing next to her desk. His name is Joey Marcum and he wants to hire Mary to find his baby brother.
Mary nodded. “Okay, Joey, but I’ll want to work with the police on this one. Do you have any problems with that?”
Joey paused. “No, I guess you can talk to them.”
“That’ll be helpful.”
“But you can’t tell my mom you’re working for me,” he said, “Promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
Joey shrugged. “I don’t think she’d understand, seeing that I’m dead, you know.”

My review
Oh I love the Mary O'Reilly series of paranormal mysteries by Terri Reid. These stories just pull me in and keep me hooked from the first page.

'Good Tidings' is the second book in the series and the story takes place during Christmas time in snowstorm battered Freeport and in Chicago.

Patrice Marcum is shopping with her infant son Jeremy. When she's about to leave the store she realises that a snowstorm is in full force outside. She cannot reach her snow-covered car with her trolley and baby. A kind old lady offers to take care of her son together with a store representative while Patrice brings the car closer to the store entrance. Patrice is grateful and she agrees, but on her return, her son and the two carers are nowhere to be seen...Jeremy has been abducted.

Mary O'Reilly is decorating her office when the ghost of six-year-old Joel Marcum visits her, telling her that his baby brother has just been abducted. He pleads with her to find him and to return Jeremy to their distraught mother. Joel is in fact Jeremy's guardian angel and he can visit him wherever he's being held. Mary agrees to help him and instructs Joel to keep an eye on his brother and to report her anything he can on his whereabouts.

Mary's investigation takes her and Police Chief Bradley Alden to ghost-infested Chicago where a string of abductions is discovered, but will they make it on time to find and save Jeremy?

In Chicago, Mary and Bradley are joined by her police brother Sean and from investigating abductions, Mary ends up on the trail of a serial murderer.

With a bunch of interesting characters including many ghosts and intriguing story lines, 'Good Tidings' is a very engaging piece of writing. With a balanced mix of laugh-out-loud moments, romance and suspense, this book is sure to leave you wanting more.


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Loose Ends - Terri Reid

6/7/2014

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5/5


Book Description
Dying is what changed Mary O’Reilly’s life. Well, actually, coming back from the dead and having the ability to communicate with ghosts is really what did it.
Now, a private investigator in rural Freeport, Illinois, Mary’s trying to learn how to incorporate her experience as a Chicago cop and new-found talent into a real job. Her challenge is to solve the mysteries, get real evidence (a ghost’s word just doesn’t hold up in court), and be sure the folks in town, especially the handsome new police chief, doesn’t think she’s nuts.
Twenty-four years ago, a young woman drowned in the swimming pool of a newly elected State Senator. It was ruled an accident. But now, as the Senator prepares to move on to higher positions, the ghost of the woman is appearing to the Senator’s wife.
Mary is hired to discover the truth behind the death. She unearths a connection between the murder and the disappearance of five little girls whose cases, twenty-four years later, are still all unsolved. As she digs further she becomes the next target for serial killers’ quest to tie up all his loose ends.


My review
I am not usually one who's drawn to paranormal mysteries, however, after reading so many positive reviews about Terri Reid's Mary O'Reilly's series, I decided to give it a try, and boy oh boy, I was literally blown away by this book. 'Loose Ends' is just the first in a long series.

Mary O'Reilly, a Chicago cop, was shot during a stake-out gone bad. Later, surrounded by her family, she died in hospital, but she remained dead only for a few minutes. She was sent back among the living with an added ability - the ability to see and speak to ghosts, especially those who have yet to resolve some issue before being able to move on and rest. She decided to combine her cop qualities with her new ability and set up a private investigation business in the town of Freeport.

Twenty four years ago, a young woman drowned in the swimming pool of the newly elected State Senator. It was ruled an accident and the case closed, but now, after all these years, the woman's ghost is haunting the senator and his wife who immediately call Mary for assistance.

Mary discovers that the woman was actually murdered, but who is the killer? What was the motive behind this young woman's murder? She also finds possible links between this murder and the disappearance of some young girls that also happened at that time.

Mary finds herself being stalked by and running for her life from someone who's determined to stop her. Now that the old cases have been re-opened, the new police chief joins her in her investigation, but will they succeed in finding the murderer? Will the woman's ghost be able to move on? Will the missing girls' families finally find closure? Nothing is as it seems.

Filled with richly described characters, action and haunting scenes, this was a very pleasurable read for me. The book contains some laugh-out-loud scenes, but also some tear-shedding ones. I highly recommend 'Loose Ends' to anyone loving paranormal investigation mysteries. I have already bought the second book in the series, 'Good Tidings'.

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