Lost Souls

Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson is another murder mystery novel that I happened to have picked up in the libary and enjoy reading. This story resolves around Kristi Bentz, who is far from your average girl. She's the daughter of Rick Bentz, a detective in New Orleans who is famous for being able to crack some of the most complex cases and brought down murderers that would make anyone cring when they heard their name. In the past, Kristi attempted to follow her father's footsteps by trying to bring in killers of the same caliber as Rick Bentz past achievements. The amazing thing is that she has succeeded in doing so, only that she has nearly gotten killed everytime she decideds to stick her head into dangerous affairs with the killers. Now at the age of twenty-seven, Kristi decides to pursue her true dream of being a crime-writer and goes back to her old college, All Saints university. But to Kristi, this isn't going to be just some education opportunity. The real reason she's going is because she thinks there's a mystery to solve there. Kristi has done some research beforehand about the college and it seems that four girls has suddenly disappeared from the campus and were never seen again. This seems completely reasonable, since all four girls were known to be depressed and have taken drugs, so everyone, including their families, were have thought to just run away from the campus with some random guy they picked up. But to Kristi, this similarity seems like the perfect excuse to simply ignore this issue to cover something big up and once Kristi gets to on the campus, she sees that her suspicions were quite accurate. When Kristi talks to some students, she can actually see that they are going to die very soon due to her special ability, which is seeing death. What I mean is that she can see someone's face and all of a sudden their skin would appear all pale. Then, as the days went on closer to their day of death, their faces would disappear and she would see a pale skull looking at her. This encounter confirms the fact that something fishy is going on in All Saints and she has to findout what. But she can't do this alone: she needs the help of high-school lover and ex-boyfriend Jay Knights, a prosectutor who has been hired as one of her teachers in the university. After settling differences, they finally team up and they discover that these disappearances may not just be from a single killer, but are a result of a whole cult worshipping vampires in the school. From then on, Kristi believes that her past encounters were nothing compared to this new threat.
This book is another rare mystery favorite that I happened to come across. It's so suspenseful, even more so than regular mystery novels because, as mentioned earlier, paranormal powers get involved in the situation and you have no idea whatsoever on what's happening! There are some parts in the book where Jackson refers to her past novels but this only encourages me to go out and buy them. I definitely recommend this book to any mystery fans. If a sci-fi guy like me enjoyed it, I'm pretty sure it will rank high for anyone who enjoys the genre.