Sunday, August 7, 2011

Great Suspense

Indelible by Kristen Heitzmann is a suspenseful read in which finding a “good” stopping place is almost impossible.  Being a teacher, I wasn’t quite clear of the meaning of the word “indelible,” so I looked it up.  According to Webster, it means something that cannot be removed or washed away and is lasting.  Natalie has dealt with eidetic (similar to photographic memory) images since childhood.  She doesn’t just “see” people, she sees their innermost being and it sometimes overwhelms her to the point of temporary blindness.  To deal with her gift/curse, she sculpts to get the pictures out of her head.  These sculptures are not put on display, but acts as a type of release for her.  When her nephew is rescued from the mouth of a mountain lion by Trevor, the wilderness outfitter next door to her gallery, Natalie becomes the one person who may be able put the pieces together in order to figure out who is behind the bizarre and disturbing pictures of children in danger being sent to Trevor.  I love good suspense stories, but appreciated this one even more because of the depth of characters and how Heitzmann used excerpts from Milton’s Paradise Lost to let the reader glimpse into a mind waging the battle between good and evil.  Being introduced to several characters sometimes gets confusing, but in Indelible you are given enough information about the characters and see them interact so they become familiar and have you looking forward to another book in which one of them might be the main character. Although Indelible is the second book in a series, it is a great stand alone read.
I received Indelible by Kristen Heitzmann for free from Multnomah Publishing in exchange for my review.