jsgoddess's Full Review: Victoria Laurie - A Vision of Murder: A Psychic Ey...
Despite how it may seem, I'm actually a pretty forgiving reader. I'll suspend my disbelief about ghosties and ghoulies, I'll accept that your characters can do magic or are so smart that they would make Einstein slash his wrists in despair. I'll go along with the Jessica Fletcher Visits O' Death, where a little old lady finds herself embroiled in murder week after week.
I might roll my eyes a little, but I'll go along.
But when you have a main character who's a psychic, and when she relies so much on her psychic powers that she asks them how she should cook her eggs, I will not go along when she acts like a damned fool without the sense of a brain damaged mollusc. I do have standards.
Abby Cooper is taking a break from her psychic work so that she can furnish her house. Apparently, psychics need a month to pick out sofas. But her plans for her month off are changed when she agrees to go into business with her sister and her handyman, buying and refurbishing houses to sell. It wouldn't be a bad plan, except the first house they buy happens to be haunted. And that might not even be that bad, except there's also a very corporeal killer on the loose, and the killer might just have a bone to pick with Abby.
The killer is on the right track. I, too, have a bone to pick with Abby. Because Abby is the snottiest snot to ever snot. And it isn't a funny sort of snottiness, it's a childish sort. She sneers, she pouts, she whines, she defies all logic and common sense, all the while asking her psychic powers the most mundane questions imaginable. How about if she asks her psychic powers if she is a brat? Hmm, I sense the answer is... yes.
When a character does every horror movie cliche to ensure that she is alone when the bad guy strikes, I find it a little tiresome. When said character is supposed to be a great psychic, it rather makes me wonder what a bad psychic would be like.
Still, this isn't a bad mystery, no matter how tiresome and stupid the sleuth. The writing is fine, the pacing fine. The other characters are just as silly as Abby, and just as annoying, but they get a lot less attention, so they are fairly easy to ignore. Besides, some people simply like watching others be idiots, so this book might fit the bill.
I asked my Magic 8 Ball if it should get 2 stars. It said ask again later. In the meantime, I'll trust my psychic socks and say yes.
Professional psychic Abby Cooper plans to fix up an old house and make a killing in the real estate market--until she encounters a killing of another ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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