Strange Blood-Lindsay Ashford

Strange Blood
Lindsay Ashford
Dunne, Dec 2007, $23.95
ISBN: 9780312355807

In England forensic psychologist Dr. Megan Rhys heads the Heartland University Department of Investigative Psychology as well as providing consulting services to the British police. Currently Megan has personal issues with a former Ph.D. student, which she hopes to derail before she runs into professional condemnation.

To occupy her mind and escape her troubles, Megan is profiling a serial killer who carves pentagrams on the foreheads of his victims. Looking into the background of the first victim wife and mother Tessa Ledbury, Megan learns the deceased was involved with Wiccan coven chief Sean Raven. Wolverhampton Detective Superintendent Steve Foy assumes between the Raven connection and the etching that the occult, probably one of the witches, is involved. Megan has doubts re Foy’s theory especially as the murder count rises, but struggles to offer a counterpoint even as she profiles the killer.

STRANGE BLOOD, the sequel to FROZEN, is a tense serial killer thriller starring an engaging heroine. Megan is terrific as once again she struggles with a police superintendent although Foy is nothing like West Midlands Police Detective Superintendent Martin Leverton of FROZEN fame who wanted Megan to fail. Readers will enjoy Megan’s profiling efforts as things don’t go quite smoothly as she tries to make the puzzle fit in a constantly morphing arrangement in which either she has to many pieces or lacks pieces.
Harriet Klausner