WITH RED HANDS

She can connect the living with the dead. She can help bring justice to the murdered. But now a killer is out to stop her...with his own red hands.

Natalie Lindstrom was once part of an elite group of investigators with the power to interview the dead victims of violent crime. But now Nathalie's had enough of the violence. Yet, as she tries to build a new life and protect her five-year-old daughter, Natalie still recognises injustice when she sees it. And she knows that in a high-profile California trial, a young man is getting away with murder.

The case against Prescott Hyland Jr is airtight - until a corrupt Violet delivers devastating testimony against another man. Now Natalie is being drawn back into her former career and a danger far worse than she can imagine. Because, in the world of the Violets, sometimes your past can literally come back to haunt you.

This is the second book in Stephen Woodworth's Violet series. In the first book, Through Violet Eyes, we met Natalie Lindstrom. Natalie is a Violet, born with violet eyes she's able to channel dead people and used to work for the NAACC's Crime Division. But she left several years ago to take care of her daughter. Callie is now five years old, and as much as she's tried to shield her from both the Corp's influence and what she is, everything catches up with Natalie in this installment.

After deciding to help her friend and deputy DA, Inez Mendoza, Natalie finds herself thrown back into the life she's tried so hard to escape. The trial of a young man charged with his parents' murder hooks her back into the dark and dangerous world of the Violets and into the path of a dangerous spirit. While also forcing her to face a few personal issues from the past. Things that shaped the way she is now.

Her father's reappearance in her life and all the resentment she felt towards him for dumping her in the Corps school, at the same time that she's dragged back into the life of her mentally ill mother, only add to the trouble brewing in her life.

With Red Hands was another intriguing and very interesting book that enhances this alternate world of the Violets, while also opening up Natalie a lot more than she was in the first book. With her daughter to care for, everything becomes riskier and harder to deal with. Yet, at the same time, Callie seems to become her connection to others, especially family. A connection that she needs in order to stay strong and capable.

Once again, this was a seriously great book that only hooked me further into the series.

With Red Hands, November 2009, ISBN 0749941324, Piatkus Fiction Paperback (A)