From Publishers Weekly
Incredible events that beg a supernatural explanation challenge the deeply ingrained skepticism of Atlanta police detective Joe Bailey in this crafty paranormal crime thriller. A former stage magician who debunks swindling spirit mediums, psychic surgeons and similar charlatans, Bailey nicknamed the "Spirit Basher" has his work cut out for him in trying to solve the grisly death of a parapsychology professor impaled midway up the wall of his apartment by a sculpture too heavy for any person to lift. He refuses to believe that moody eight-year-old Jesse Randall, a supposed psychic prodigy, may have unintentionally murdered the man by unleashing an unconscious "shadow storm" during sleep. But while Joe is determined to prove the boy a con artist, others are not so dismissive, among them a psychopathic killer convinced that Jesse is the "Child of Light" prophesied by his millennialist cult. Though Johansen (The Answer Man) offers half-hearted psychological rationales for some characters' motives, he mostly keeps the story to its surface, which he polishes brilliantly to allow for the collision of nonstop, tricky plot complications, including a mysterious money laundering scheme by the dead prof, Joe's romance with a medium he's investigating and Jesse's helicopter abduction from a church service by armed assailants. Many, but not all, of the supernatural scams are explained by the novel's end, and readers will have fun trying to keep up with the tale's rapid pace and Johansen's nimble sleight-of-hand. (Apr. 10)101.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
A professor of parapsychology is found murdered, the body displayed halfway up the wall in his study, impaled by a sculpture. Detective Joe Bailey, a former magician and now a member of the Atlanta Police Department's bunco squad, who scouts out scams by phony psychics, is called in to ferret out the real m.o. behind what seems to be an otherworldly murder. The chief suspect, according to the dead prof's girlfriend, is an eight-year-old boy with telekinetic powers. The ever-skeptical Bailey (magic taught him there's an explanation for everything) finds his worldview shaken and his life endangered as unaccountable things start happening around him. The moves of a serial killer in Atlanta who has appointed himself the eight-year-old boy's guardian heighten the suspense. Johansen, who won an Edgar for The Answer Man (1999), introduces another tough-guy hero and a cast of off-kilter characters in an absolute stunner of a thriller. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
