Praise for
laura anne gilman PARANORMAL SCENE INVESTIGATIONS
Hard Magic
âReaders will love the Mythbusters-style fun of smart, sassy people
solving mysteries through experimentation, failure, and blowing stuff up.â
âPublishers Weekly, starred review
Pack of Lies
âBonnieâs intelligence and perceptiveness really make this book go and
readers will root for her and the team to solve their investigation.â
âRT Book Reviews, Top Pick
Staying Dead
âAn entertaining, fast-paced thriller.â
âLocus
Curse the Dark
âFeatures fast-paced action, wisecracking dialogue,
and a pair of strong, appealing heroes.â
âLibrary Journal
Bring it On
âRipping good urban fantasy, fast-paced
and filled with an exciting blend of mystery and magic⦠this is a paranormal romance for those who normally avoid romance, and the entire series is worth checking out.â
âSF Site
Burning Bridges
âLeaves the reader on the edge of her seat for the next book.â
âRT Book Reviews, 4 stars
Free Fall
âThe best of the Retrievers series to date.â
âPublishers Weekly, starred review
Blood from Stone
âExtreme fun, nicely balanced with dark stuffâ¦
and a scene in a museum that had me whimpering with joy.â
âGreen Man Review
My name is Bonnie Torres, and Iâm a student of (in)human nature. More specifically, and according to the business cards we donât actually have yet, Iâm a Paranormal Scene Investigator. What that means is that I look at the world a little differently than most, even among my fellow Talent.
I used to be an idealist of sorts. Not that everyone was goodâ I knew firsthand that we were all filled with conflicting impulses, some positive and some negative, and sometimes the negative ones got out and did damage. I also knew that there were people who didnât feel any guilt about the damage they did. But a year ago, I would have claimed that responsibility was all about your intent; that if you meant well, did your best, and didnât hurt anyone, you could sleep with a clear conscience. Then I was recruited to join PUPI, Ian Stosserâs dream of an unbiased, impartial investigative unit designed to ferret out the truth behind crimes of a magical nature or cause.
Ian Stosser had been a certified boy wonder, once upon a time: Golden Boy of the Midwest Council, high-res Talent and general scary-ass smart guy. But something happened in Chicago, something they still donât talk about, and he came to New York with his business partner Benjamin Venec, to hang their shingle here.
Ian said there was a need, that the Cosa Nostradamus needed us, to save it from itself. The Cosa Nostradamus wasnât all that thrilled to be saved, but Ian had been rightâthere was a need. After only a few months weâthe Private, Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigations teamâgot our first case, a bad one: a double murder. We solved it, proved what had happened, let the authoritiesâsuch as the Cosa hasâhandle the punishment. And then, once weâd demonstrated we could be trusted to be fair in our investigations, impartial in our discoveries, we were approached to investigate a few more, and they were all bad.
They only call us when itâs bad.
Magic isnât an instinct; for most of us it requires forethought to pull current and direct it against someone else. That means Talent mostly donât commit crimes of passion, but ones of forethought and malice. By the time we get called in? The crimeâs been committed, and all we see is the tarry residue left in the aftermath, the pain and the grief and the greed and the malice and the denialâand, sometimes, the regret and remorse, too late to do any good.
When I took this job, my mentor had warned me: you rarely see anyoneâs shining better nature in this job. Heâd been right.
PUPI did good work, though. We got people answers, closure. We were making sure that there were consequences to actions. From the lonejacks and gypsies on the street to the Council members in their hushed private offices, the word was spreading: we were smart, we were sharp, and we were unaffiliatedâsomething rare in the highly political world of magic. If you came to us with a mystery, we would find the answers, no matter where they led.
We investigated events. We stuck to the facts. But thereâs no way, I was learning, that you could separate facts and events from the people who drive them. And people? People are complicated. Responsibility is complicated.
Every case we took, from the cold-blooded killer-for-hire to the regret-stricken being who let terrible things happen for love, taught me that some acts cannot be excused, no matter the intentâ¦and that itâs possible to sleep soundly, your conscience clear as a cloudless sky, after inflicting terrible harm on someone. People arenât good. Theyâre not bad, either, mostly. Theyâre actions and reactions, pushed this way and that by things we have so little control over.