Maybe one book a quarter in Heather Graham’s Krewe of Hunters series is too many. After reading thirty-four of them, I still find the settings and the history irresistible. In The Forbidden, Graham takes readers back to New Orleans. But, the final cemetery scene, including the heroine’s act of self-defense, feels too familiar. As I said with the previous book, The Unforgiven, the romance just seemed off.
Avalon Morgan is an actress playing the bride of a vampire in a friend’s movie, filming on Christy Island off the coast of New Orleans. When the makeup artist doesn’t show one morning, a friend steps in. They all complain, but say Cindy West was too professional to let a night on Bourbon Street keep her away from the shoot. When Avalon and her friend Kevin find Cindy’s body laid out on a tomb in the island cemetery, it comes as a shock. It’s also a shock when Finley Stirling, an FBI Special Agent with the Krewe of Hunters shows up and they learn everyone on the film crew is suspect.
It doesn’t take long for Fin to realize that, like him, Avalon can see and communicate with ghosts. She doesn’t believe him, until they both talk to one of the former residents, now dead, on the sidewalk. Even if Avalon doesn’t like or trust him, Fin knows she can be an asset in his search for Cindy’s killer. Then he learns about another murder, another young woman whose death is arranged as a tableau. The estate where the body was found is close enough to New Orleans to be reachable. And, it seems many of Avalon’s film friends were around that area at the time of that death.
Avalon is working her second job as a website designer when she comes across something eerie on her computer. For some reason, the letter reminds her of a stalker, a possible serial killer of young women. And, then the letter vanishes, explodes on her laptop. She reaches out to Fin, turning her computer over to the FBI. She’s still convinced though that her friends are not killers.
The latest books in the Krewe of Hunters series seem to leave some clues unexplained. There are weaknesses in the last couple books that I don’t remember in earlier ones in the series. As I said, I’m hanging in there. I still like history mixed with the paranormal and a little romance. But, The Forbidden isn’t the best book in Heather Graham’s series.
Heather Graham’s website is http://theoriginalheathergraham.com
The Forbidden by Heather Graham. MIRA, 2021. ISBN 9780778311508 (hardcover), 302p.
FTC Full Disclosure – Library book
