A Grave Prediction
Psychic Eye Mystery, Book #14
By Victoria Laurie
ISBN#9780451473882
Author’s website: www.Victorialaurie.com
Brought to you by OBS Reviewer Daniele
Synopsis:
When Abby is sent to Los Angeles to help train FBI officers to use their intuition, she encounters a case that only she can solve: a series of bank robberies in which the thieves made off with loads of cash but left no clues. Abby’s sixth sense leads her team to a tract of land recently cleared for development, where she gets a vision of four buried bodies. However, a site search turns up only ancient bones and pottery from an American Indian tribe, which is enough to delay construction for years.
With a furious developer and dubious FBI agents on her back, Abby is losing credibility fast. But Abby’s talent rarely leads her astray, and if the bodies aren’t there yet, that means four deaths can still be stopped. She’ll just have to dig a little deeper….
Review:
Psychic and FBI consultant Abby Cooper is not thrilled when she is told she has no choice but to go to the Los Angeles field office and teach the agents how to use intuition in solving their cases. That is the official reason. In truth, Abby stepped on some political toes while solving her last case, and she must now prove she is worth keeping in the FBI’s budget. Knowing that Abby does not want to go, and will surely face some pushback from the skeptical agents, her best friend Candice surprises her at the airport to go along as emotional support.
In L.A. Abby does not only find skepticism and an icy reception but outright hostility and test after test of her abilities. She thinks that providing the agents with crucial information that will lead to taking down a black market stolen art ring is enough, but only one agent is swayed to her side. Next, Abby is asked to look at a string of bank robberies where the thieves have left absolutely no clues, but she is distracted by graves in an area adjacent to one of the bank branches. Sure that there are four murder victims there, she is shocked when only very old Native American burials are found. This does not endear her to the agents, but the more she thinks about it the more she is convinced that the victims will be buried there in the future. How does she solve a crime that has not yet happened? How does this land slated for development tie into the bank robberies? She and Candice will get to the bottom of things with or without the FBI’s assistance.
There are several uncoordinated plot threads presented in A Grave Prediction, and, at first, it all seems like a big mess. Slowly but surely, Laurie weaves them all together to make one cohesive story. This complicated mystery is what saves this book for me. It kept me thinking for a good portion of the book, and the final piece of the puzzle did come as somewhat of a surprise to me. I enjoyed going along with Abby as she connected the dots. However, there was a lot of repetition of information throughout the book.
Truthfully, I do not like any of the characters this time around. The FBI agents, with the exception of Hart, are cookie cutter and downright nasty to Abby. Abby is snarky, passive aggressive, and pouty herself. For someone who is supposed to be thirty-seven years old and a professional woman, she is often immature and handles dealings with other people poorly. Her best friend Candace should not have to “teach” her how to be an adult. Abby uses totally age inappropriate slang (amazeballs, totes, etc) and comes across as someone much younger. She annoyed me at least once on almost every single page. Too much complaining, too many nicknames, too much talk about diets, too much doing the “wrong” thing for the “right reason”.
Laurie’s fans will probably enjoy this fourteenth book in her long running Psychic Eye series. I liked it but did not love it. Just as an FYI, these books are edgier than most cozy mysteries and have harsher language.
