Mind Over Monsters

August 29, 2011
With a wackiness level approaching Saturday morning cartoon territory, Harlow’s police procedural debut introduces the F.R.E.A.K.S. (Federal Response to Extra-Sensory and Kindred Supernaturals) squad. Psychokinetic schoolteacher Beatrice Alexander must settle in to the social dynamics of this top-secret, monster-fighting branch of the FBI alongside a preppy psychometrist; a teleporting bank-robbing teenager; a short-tempered firestarter; a friendly medium; a shy, sexy werewolf; and a dramatically obnoxious vampire. Beatrice holds her own as the team tracks down a smalltown, big-power necromancer through a mix of psychic powers and good old detective work. The lighthearted if slightly gory tale moves quickly, ties up cleanly, and leaves the reader with a strong sense of this motley group as a tight working team. The amusingly stereotyped characterization probably won’t support a lot of character growth, but readers can look forward to plenty of high-energy chases after odd supernatural baddies in future installments.

September 1, 2011

How would you like your job if your co-workers included a vampire and a werewolf?

Bea Alexander, an elementary schoolteacher, has one trait so alarming most people avoid her. Even her family calls her a monster. So when George Black drops by and invites her to join F.R.E.A.K.S. (Federal Response to Extra-Sensory and Kindred Supernaturals), his unit at the FBI, she's so lonely that she agrees and is whisked off to a secret compound in Kansas. There she meets a dishy vampire, a handsome werewolf, a woman who can make her spontaneously combust, a teen who used to rob banks and specializes in teleportation, a blind man who chats with ghosts and a psychic who can read her mind. Their mission is to fight "UNCRETS," that is, unidentified creatures. But first Bea has to learn how to harness her awesome power to blast people, places and things to smithereens. She's barely through training when she and the other Freaks head to Colorado to solve two murders the local sheriff attributes to wild animals but the FBI doesn't. The adventure entails several near-death experiences when they are twice attacked by zombies, assaulted by ghouls, practically incinerated in a cemetery mausoleum, sucked empty of liters of blood, shot at and, in Bea's case, both propositioned and almost devoured by the vampire and the werewolf. Babysitting a little dead girl puts Bea in harm's way, but her training and her special skill save the day, give or take a few missing chunks of flesh.

If Donald Westlake had ever gotten around to writing a paranormal mystery, it would have sounded like this. Harlow's genre debut is funny, creepy and refreshingly brash.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 15, 2011

Beatrice Alexander is no ordinary schoolteacher. She's in fact a Carrie-level psychokinetic who has never been able to master her ability to move objects with her mind. Then she's recruited and trained by the Federal Response to Extra-Sensory and Kindred Supernaturals. F.R.E.A.K.S. is a covert FBI division that steps in whenever ghouls, ogres, and other paranormal fiends threaten humanity. For her first case, Beatrice must hunt down a powerful necromancer. But she has to get past an army of zombies along with her F.R.E.A.K.S. compadres: a supermodel-gorgeous pyrokinetic, a teenage teleporter, a preppy psychic, a blind medium, a seductive vampire, and one smokin' hot werewolf. Chills and laughter share equal time in Harlow's fresh and funny debut. This supersensory heroine and her paranormal partners are the most engaging detectives to face the walking dead since Scully and Mulder. Part urban fantasy, part police procedural, and entirely marvelous, monstrous fun, this is sure to amass an army of fans, all of whom will be gnashing their teeth in anticipation of the next installment.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.