Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½
DEA agent Jack Thorne and his wife are killed, and his reputation shredded after his death. His 12-year-old daughter Lou only escapes courtesy of her father’s sacrifice, and an unwanted innate talent, which she shares with her aunt, Lucy. Lou has the ability – sometimes without her choice – to transport herself through the shadows or through water to another, similar location. After the loss of her parents, Lou goes to live with her aunt and learns to control and use her skill. Fourteen years later, and now a grown woman, she is on a crusade of vengeance, to seek out and destroy every member of the Martinelli crime family responsible for her parents’ deaths.
Of course, that’s the thing about revenge: it’s messy. It’s at least somewhat fine when it’s just Lou who is put at risk. But those around her are not immune from being sucked in to her deadly mission. For instance Lucy calls on the help of a former DEA agent, now a private eye, Robert King to give Lou a purpose beyond multiple murder. Except, the case on which they work together ends up bringing heat on everyone, and is related to Lou’s personal vendetta. The truth about who was behind it is also revealed: it wasn’t just the Martinellis acting on their own, which Lou finds out, as she hunts the last surviving member of the family, Konstantine.
I like the concept here, and the way Lou’s power used is well-handled by Shrum. It obviously acts as a force multiplier for the heroine, especially at the end when she has to go up against the man at the top and his men. It also provides an effective, if grisly, way to cover her tracks. There is another world she visits, called La Loon (quite why she slides into this extraterrestrial location is unclear), with its vicious predator, whom she calls Jabbers. Yet it is not an unlimited power-up, and Lou’s reluctance to ask for or accept help in her mission, stops her from feeling overpowered. She has a lot of bottled-up issues, hidden behind what can sometimes feel like an emotionless facade.
It might have been better to have focused on Lou, and her journey from troubled pre-teen through to avenging angel. Instead, it’s very much joining her vengeance well in progress, and we get more about King and his relationship with Lucy, which is considerably less interesting. Despite being the first in a lengthy series, it feels satisfactorily self-contained. Indeed, perhaps a little too much so, since I wasn’t left with particular interest in seeing where Lou’s story went after achieving closure. I’m sure there’s potential there. I mean, if she became an UberEats delivery agent, you’d never have to worry about your food arriving cold. I suspect this is probably not the direction in which the series goes…
Author: Kory M. Shrum
Publisher: Timberlane Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 11 in the Shadows in the Water series.