Blind Spot

January 1, 2007
In this humdrum thriller with ghostly undercurrents, the first of a new series, Persons uses an old plot idea: endowing her female FBI agent with the power to see through the eyes of a serial killer as he goes about his nefarious business. Agent Bernadette Saint Clare has been kicking around field offices all over the United States when she shows up for her new assignment in St. Paul, hoping that her unusual vision and strange ability will be more welcome than they usually are to both her bosses and her fellow agents. She immediately draws a case involving bodies bound with unusual knots and each missing a right hand. A ring found at one of the sites leads her into the eyes of the killer, but his identity and motives remain unclear. Because Bernadette makes wrong choices, she struggles to understand what the reader has long figured out, missing golden opportunities to catch her man and often placing herself in mortal danger. In future installments, Persons would do well to develop her heroine's ordinary crime-busting skills.

March 1, 2007
Bernadette Saint Clare believes that her reassignment to the basement of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's St. Paul office is designed to keep her from spooking the other agents. Ever since the psychic bond she shared with her twin sister was severed by a fatal accident, Bernadette's supernatural abilities have allowed her to see through the eyes of the criminals she's investigating. When an avenging angel starts hacking off the hands of purported sinners and then killing them, Bernadette uses her second sight to piece together clues about the murderer. Bernadette combines good, old-fashioned police work with the information she gets through her visions, and the paranormal nature of her detecting does not compromise the conventions of standard serial-killer thrillers. There is a late-in-the-book revelation about her lover, however, that may have fans of John Sandford and P.J. Tracy wishing this Twin City read were a little more down to earth. The first in a new series; recommended for public libraries.Karen Kleckner, Deerfield P.L., IL

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