Carolyn Haines Revenant

Revenant

Carolyn Haines

Mira, Sep 2007, $6.99

ISBN: 9780778324171

Since her daughter died two years ago, reporter Carson Lynch numbs the grief with vodka and work. Her career in the balance, Carson returns home to Biloxi, Mississippi hoping to regain her equilibrium on the local newspaper. Her assignments are minor league but palpable by her night time partner, a bottle of vodka.

However, a potential international story surfaces when five women wearing bridal veils and missing their ring finger are found buried in a parking lot; the work of a serial killer years ago. Soon afterward more corpses are found in the identical condition of those found buried in the parking lot. As the Biloxi police investigate the homicides, Carson does likewise.

Carson Lynch is terrific as she provides the audience with a first person investigative Noir in the vividly described setting of post Katrina Biloxi. She makes the whodunit fun to read as still struggles with her loss, which is only numbed by imbibing yet when she gets involved in what appears to be either a copy cat serial killer or a second round of homicides, she turns professional. Readers will enjoy her amusing dark asides and her dangerous investigative escapades on the streets of Biloxi.

Harriet Klausner