Loose Ends, by Terri Reid
Loose Ends is Book 1 of 20 (the Mary O’Reilly Paranormal Mystery Series). Obviously at 20 books the series is tremendously successful, which says a lot about this self-published author. Readers love the series, so I just had to try the first one. The story begins with the murder of a young woman—the secret mistress of a politician on the brink of a spectacular career. But you soon learn this isn’t the only murder in this book. The others are little girls, which disturbed me greatly.
Private Investigator Mary O’Reilly, who can see and speak with ghosts, ends up seeing visions of the last few moments of life of the murdered young woman as well as the children. She sees them die, but she cannot see who murdered them. That fact seemed a little too handy, plot-wise, to me. But oh well, it’s a paranormal mystery, and the author controls the rules.
Police Chief Bradley Alden thinks Mary is a “nut case,” and asks himself, “Why are the cute ones always psycho?” The interplay between these two is entertaining. To top things off, the villain is villainous in the extreme. I found myself mildly disgusted by this character. Overall, the novel left a bad taste in my mouth. Although it’s well-written, I just was turned off by the subject matter. Sometime in the future, I’ll try another book in this series, however.