Yasmine Galenorn, Murder Under a Mystic Moon

Murder Under a Mystic Moon

Yasmine Galenorn

Berkley, Jan 2005, $5.99, 271 pp.

ISBN 0425200027

Emerald O'Brien didn't know when she moved from Seattle to Chiqetaw that the town rests on a psychic power field and since Emerald has a strong psychic sense she is open to all the paranormal activity that surrounds the town. When her friend Jimbo O'Brien asks Emerald to look for his biker friend Scar who disappeared without a trace, she agrees to help him though there are many stories about the Klakatat monster (similar to Bigfoot) who appears from time to time in the Klickavail woods where he was last seen.

Emerald, her best friend, the medium Murray and Jimbo enter the woods; the psychic uses her sixth sense to locate Scar who was murdered. The coroner rules he was killed by a cougar but Emerald and Murray sense it was a human who murdered him even though there are many elementals in the area who could have been responsible for the deed. When another biker is killed in the same place, Gordon, another psychic, is arrested, but Emerald's worst enemy asks for her help in proving her cousin's innocence. Since Emerald believes George not guilty, she sets out to prove that the police arrested the wrong man and she won't let the Klakatat monster or the elementals stop her.

MURDER UNDER a Mystic MOON is a refreshingly innovative paranormal mystery that will appeal to a wide range of mystery aficionados. The heroine is very frightened of what she sees and knows in the etheral world but she still uses her psychic powers to go the extra mile to see that justice prevails even if it means putting her own life in danger. Yasmine Galenorn is an author to keep an eye out as she is heading towards superstardom.

Harriet Klausner