If an author creates a world you like very much, you are always a bit afraid before starting to read the next installment. Will she be able to live up to your expectations?
What more can be added to such a well-described world? These are the questions you ask, even though you can hardly wait to start the next book. This is probably also what the fans of Karen Koehler's Slayer series will be asking, but, in her case, there's no need to worry about that. In The Blackburn & Scarletti Mysteries, Volume I, she takes world-building to another level, to a level where completely new characters can be introduced, and the two main characters investigate events that are unrelated to those described in the earlier books.

In the first three books of the Slayer series, the author introduced us to a world that is behind ours and is populated by both beautiful and ugly creatures of the night, the looks of which shed little light on their real characters and their deeds. We got to know the dhampiri, half-human, half-vampire creatures, and the slayers whose task is to destroy the vampires and the other supernatural creatures that break the rules of this dark and fascinating world, unseen by ordinary men.

In "Sins Of The Father", the first of the two novellas contained in The Blackburn & Scarletti Mysteries, Volume I, we are introduced to an exceptional, strong female character. She's psychic FBI agent, paranormal expert and action hero January Blackburn who gets a new, special partner from the Vatican for investigating a series of exceptionally brutal murders. The new partner, Dorian Scarletti turns out to be a slayer, and a whole new world opens up in front of the young woman.

After solving the bizarre case, they get another one in the next story, entitled "The Hyde Effect". In this novella, January learns about the city's werewolf community and about the laws commanding it. At the same time, she also starts worrying about an ages old vampire man with great power, who seems to take a strong interest in her.

The dangers that such exceptional characters have to face also have to be extreme, but Karen Koehler is wonderfully talented in creating new monsters. Just as she has come up with a new type of vampire, she's also deviating from the traditional werewolf myth, too. She does this with fascinating inventiveness and an amazing richness of details.

For this type of writing, the publisher uses the term 'industrial gothic', and I'm sure we will hear this term more often in the future. The Blackburn & Scarletti Mysteries, Volume I is highly recommended for lovers of vampire fiction, horror and mysteries. If you are one, don't miss it.

Reviewed By Ilona Hegedus
© December 2005