Thursday, November 21, 2013

Full of Grace: Tuesday’s Child Earns It!



Title: Tuesday’s Child
Author(s): Dale Mayer
Publisher: Valley Publishing
Copyright: 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1-927461-31-0
Format: trade paperback & ebook
Genre: Paranormal/Romance
Part of Series: Book #3 of Psychic Visions
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

A Gift I Wouldn’t Want Either

We’ve often heard that psychic “gifts” can be a curse, but Tuesday’s Child takes the cursing part to the extreme. Dale Mayer creates a compelling paranormal/romance novel, where the main character is reclusive psychic Samantha Blair. Sam’s psychic gift isn’t just an audio-visual or emotional connection to the subject; she has a physical connection to murder victims. Sam lives through each ghoulish detail with the victims in real time, including their bleeding. She gains our sympathy in the opening scene while experiencing one of these psychic episodes: “The attack became a frenzy of stabs and slices, snatching all thought away. Her body jerked and arched in a macabre dance. Black spots blurred her vision and still the slaughter continued.” Experiencing these horrific episodes leaves Sam physically depleted, often with wounds that heal at a paranormal rate. We see how frail and vulnerable she is in a wide world that doesn’t accept her strange ability. Where police suspect her involvement if she tells them about the murders and where harassment or rejection is what Sam expects from everyone. Mayer compels us to want to see Sam nurtured with vivid descriptions. We want someone to come to her rescue, to help her, protect her and offer her some repast from the brutality she lives.

Dale Mayer creates the perfect compatibility in the form of Detective Brandt Sutherland. Brandt is researching cold cases he believes are related to a series of murders he’s been investigating. Brandt isn’t the stereotypical hard-nosed cop we’ve come to expect. He is an intelligent and capable member of Law Enforcement, but he is also open-minded. Hints of his previous work with a psychic gives us hope for Brandt working with Sam. There is the added bonus of the patient way he handles his mother when she gets in trouble at the assisted living facility. We feel confident that he can nurture Sam in the same way. So even though Sam doesn’t trust Brandt, we do and we root for their successful union through the period of mistrust that’s bound to occur.

A Plot That Moves With Intelligence

Tuesday’s Child combines a dichotomous plot of both fast-moving murder investigation and the importance of friends and family that keeps us reading to the end. Brandt’s gentle interactions with his mother combine with Sam’s helping dogs at the local vets to create a loving backdrop in which a serial killer strikes at select victims with horrifying violence and blood-letting. The murder has the glee of a naughty child who doesn’t get caught with his hand in the cookie jar. This contrast of gentleness versus violence, love versus hatred continues throughout the novel’s plot and subplot giving us the real-world feel of both the safety and danger around us and reminds us why we fight to keep the world safe. Dale Mayer creates an interesting read blended with a formula romance to produce the perfect book to read on a rainy night or at the beach.