Skin Deep

June 22, 2009
Murder, mayhem and multiple identities merge in this electric series opener. In an alternate present where fey and human entities coexist more or less peacefully, Janice Crawford, a druid working for Washington, D.C., SWAT, is nearly killed in a mission gone awry. Mariel Tate, a high-ranking agent within a global security firm, InterSec, investigates, finding ties to a fey history exhibit at the National Archives curated by Laura Blackstone, the PR director for the Fey Guild. The catch is that Janice, Mariel and Laura are all one woman who keeps her personas separate by magic and sheer willpower. Readers will sometimes stumble back and forth to remember who is interacting with whom, but Del Franco (Unquiet Dreams
) does a commendable job of blending each of Laura’s different personas into the addictively fast-paced narrative and fully believable setting.

July 15, 2009
Laura Blackstone is a druid, and her power involves the manipulation of essence, which can be used to create physical glamoursallowing her to appear to be other people. She has developed two other personas: Janice Crawford, a slightly dowdy member of the city's SWAT team, and Mariel Tate, a glamorous intelligence agent with no qualms about using her beauty to get information. When Janice is shot during a routine drug bust, Laura finds her three personas converging and realizes that she's in the middle of something much larger than a simple narcotics operation. VERDICT This new series launch by the author of the Connor Grey books ("e.g., Unshapely Things") is spy fiction with a supernatural twistthink "Alias"'s Sydney Bristow with magical powers. The politics in Del Franco's DC are even more complex than real-world politics, and the fey characters are clever and out of the ordinary. Fans of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files and Rob Thurman's Cal Leandros series will enjoy.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.