Review: Shadow’s Edge by S.C. Wynne

Title: Shadow’s Edge

Series: Psychic Detective Mysteries: Book One

Author: S.C. Wynne

Publisher: Self-Published

Length: 169 Pages

Category: Paranormal, Mystery/Suspense

At a Glance: Suspenseful on both the investigative and romantic fronts, Shadow’s Edge is one of the finest books I’ve read so far this year.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Liam Baker can see things. Dead people like to visit him and tell them how they were wronged. Some might call it a gift, other’s a curse. But either way this ability makes him useful to Los Angeles homicide detective Kimball Thompson.

Some madman is slitting the throats of young male prostitutes and then dumping their bodies in the desert with vague clues of pink feathers and the number five. Usually Liam can talk to the spirits of the dead. But someone is blocking him. Someone is taunting him.

The case is rapidly deteriorating into a violent, psychic pissing contest and Liam can’t see far enough ahead to figure out who wins or who dies.

Review: In the ongoing saga of Where Has This Book Been All My Life?, S.C. Wynne’s Shadow’s Edge takes its place among those rare little gems that remind me why I love to read.

Liam Baker has a talent, or a curse, depending upon which side of it you’re on. He can communicate with the dead, which proves helpful to the LAPD homicide division but doesn’t do much for Liam’s nerves on top of the fact that his own existence over the past nine months has been more one foot in the abyss than an active participation in living. Wynne draws readers into Liam’s life by allowing him to narrate this story in the first person, which is so effective in the result of this drawing an immediate emotional connection between us and the single most traumatic event of his life. Connecting with his pain allows us to build on that investment in a way that makes rooting for some sort of happiness to fall into his orbit part of the engagement in the story

Homicide detective Kimball Thompson has known Liam for a while, but their working relationship is a recent development precipitated by a string of murders with similarities that include puzzling clues left at the crime scenes. Someone is killing street kids, but, more specifically, he’s killing the boys who trade sex for cash, which seems to be the only common connection apart from the items left on or near their bodies. Wynne does a fantastic job of meting out the details of the crimes without giving away everything all at once, including the way Liam’s abilities help but are also hampered by this investigation in a metaphysical way, and I loved trying to piece together the clues along with Liam and Thompson. The best aspect of the procedural is it develops in a way that just as they were figuring out what it all meant, so did I, and those participation points I allowed myself made the reading all the more satisfying.

The gradual and natural evolution of Liam and Thompson’s relationship happens amidst a confusion of feelings for Liam and translates into his nearly losing his one shot at reengaging in his life again. Simply put, Thompson was on the verge of giving up on ever getting closer to Liam, of drawing him back from that abyss and making him see that having a future didn’t mean losing all that mattered to him in the past, and I liked that the tension was drawn out without it eclipsing the fact that there was still a serial killer on the loose.

In a scant 169 pages, S.C. Wynne tells an outstanding story with a proficient economy. The investigation could have been drawn out, the tension between Liam and Thompson could have been exaggerated and left to flounder along interminably, but none of that was necessary to tell an effective story. Once Liam and Thompson put the meaning of the clues together, things wrapped up quickly with a thrilling brush with the killer that exposed his pathology and psychopathy in a delicious way.

Suspenseful on both the investigative and romantic fronts, Shadow’s Edge is one of the finest books I’ve read so far this year.

You can buy Shadow’s Edge here:
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