Sacred Evil (Krewe of Hunters Series book #3) By Heather Graham (Book Review)
Plot: Murders take place on a daily basis in New York. But what’s so special about these murders is that someone is copying each and everyone of Jack The Ripper’s kills. The Krewe of Hunters is called in to investigate the murders using their paranormal abilities. When Whitney arrives early she finds herself working very closely with Jude, a NYC detective.
My Review: After the first two novels, Phantom Evil and Heart of Evil, I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this one. The first two were pretty different from one another. This one is almost completely different from the first two. The entire “Krewe” isn’t in the book until almost half way through the book. Instead it concentrates on Whitney and a police detective – Jude.
In NYC there are tons of murders, but when one in the style of Jack the Ripper happens the Krewe is immediately called in to help. Whitney decides to head over before the rest of the group because she had attended filming school in New York, and the woman who was murdered happened to be an actress.
They discover that back in the day after the original Jack the Ripper murders, there were a couple murders in NYC that appeared to have been done by Jack the Ripper, and a lot of historians think that the murders in London stopped because Jack came to the USA. All of this is actual fact, not made up for the book. (the murders did really happen, but nobody can say if it was the real Jack or not, everyone has a different theory) But Heather Graham puts her own spin on it with including a satanic cult that NYC Jack could have been a member of once he came to NY. If it was even the real Jack.
The material of this novel interested me a lot more then the first two because this one is based on Jack the Ripper. Which is a killer, I think, that everyone is fascinated by because he was never caught, there is all this mystery surrounding him.
While the basic storyline interested me a lot, I didn’t really feel this whole relationship between Whitney and Jude. It was all of the sudden there. Obviously it was going to happen, but it just didn’t feel “romantic” to me. In fact, I was sort of disturbed, because here they are doing all these investigations with people’s insides on the outside, and they rush home at one point and have sex. I just found it to be bad taste. But honestly I think it was all in the way it was written. Had more of their interest in each other been more detailed within the book and throughout the book, it wouldn’t have been a problem.
The ghosts in this book seemed a little silly to me. I haven’t really found them believable or entertaining at all throughout this series. If you’ve read my other reviews you know I went into this series expecting it to be about haunting and ghosts, not investigators talking to (or in this case watching/following) ghosts to solve real murder cases. I’ve tried to adapt to this sort of book. But overall I don’t think its for me.
I did however enjoy the gore factor, and the mystery surrounding who the killer was. I thought I had it figured out and then bam, it wasn’t who I suspected. I’ve noticed that this series really seems to have “off the radar” killers.
One thing that was annoying was that for a few pages the author got a characters confused. In ½ of one scene Jude was referred to as Jake, even though Jake wasn’t around. Pretty poor editing (something all the books in the series have in common). It happens again towards the end of the book. It really confuses the reader. And again in regards to poor editing and the kindle preview version. It had weird spaces here
and there where
sentences started on one line for three or four
words and had a blank area then continued on the next line for a couple words. Like this.
This happened with all the books in the series so far, but this one definitely had the least amount of issues like that.
Overall: I liked the subject matter of this book more then all the others, but I didn’t feel the romance aspect of it. My favorite romance so far to the series is Jake and Ashley of the 2nd book (Heart of Evil). I just don’t think this series fits what I was looking for, and what I like. I have one more to the series to read, and I’m done – unless of course Heather decides to write more. But at this point I don’t think I’d continue the series as they just aren’t what I’m into right now.
[rating:3/5]
