A SHIMMER OF RED

A suburban New Jersey realtor gifted with second sight tangles with another killer.

No sooner has Tanya Risko introduced her two latest hires to the veteran staff at Risko Realty—clairvoyant sometime caterer Odessa Jones, father figure Vinton Laverne, Afghanistan vet Harley Wilde, and single parent Louella, who’s struggling to raise her daughter, Erika, as she recovers from her own mother’s death—than one of the newbies is flattened by a hit-and-run driver. Like her friend Bella Mondavi, the late Anna Lee had left hoity-toity Delbarton Estates to join Risko Realty, and the first mystery to present itself is why. Well-heeled CEO Emily Delbarton, who wants to hire Dessa and Louella to cater an event, won’t speak ill of the dead, but her brother, Edgar, who first met Anna when she was working at the strip club BUNS, feverishly demands what “Angel” left him—a likely tip-off even to readers who aren’t clairvoyant that he’ll be the next victim. Dessa, who’s still in the early stages of learning to control the mysterious visions that come to her, is distracted when she realizes that house stager Rosalie Davis’ dying father is Terrence Davis, the first love who skipped out on her without a word a week before their wedding. Instead of just tossing in this sort-of-romantic subplot, Wesley makes it pivotal to her story in ways that turn up the pressure on Dessa as lover, sleuth, and seer.

A meager ration of clues leads to a compelling payoff.