A Grim Reapers Guide to Catching a Killer by Maxie Dara-Review
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Description:
Sometimes it takes working with the dead to start living.
Kathy Valence is forty-two, mid-divorce, and pregnant with her ex’s baby. She’s also a modern-day grim reaper employed by S.C.Y.T.H.E. (Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences), but frankly that’s the easiest part of her life right now. Or at least it was, until her latest client’s soul goes missing.
When she finally tracks down seventeen-year-old Conner Ortiz, he angrily denies he died of natural causes, despite what his file says. He insists that someone at S.C.Y.T.H.E. murdered him, and he demands Kathy find out who and why.
Kathy has only forty-five days to figure out what happened to Conner and help him move on before the boy’s soul is doomed to roam the Earth as a ghost forever. She’s forced to rely on the help of her retired mentor, her almost ex-husband—and some sneaky moves by Conner himself. This is the wildest case of her career. . .and one wrong move could cost Kathy her job, not to mention her life.
Review:
A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer by Maxi Dara is an exciting paranormal story. We meet Kathy Valence, who is 42years old, and in the midst of a divorce, even though her husband, Simon is thrilled that she is pregnant. She is a modern-day grim reaper, who works for SCYTHE (Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences (souls)). Her job is to collect a newly deceased person’s soul for processing to the afterlife; she is very successful at her job.
Kathy is assigned to case number 507032, who is known as Conner Ortiz, who was killed. Conner is 17 years old, and Kathy cannot find him. When she eventually discovers him, he tells her that he was murdered by someone wearing a SCYTHE badge. Connor at first was hostile, but in time, he was willing to work closely with Kathy, and find out who murdered him. Kathy’s mentor Jo, as well as her ex-Simon will also help her find out what is going on in the SCYTHE offices. Time is of essence, as Connor has a 45 day window, where if he doesn’t make it, his soul would be doomed to roam the Earth as a ghost forever.
I really liked Kathy, as well as Simon, who was very much still in love with Kathy, especially now that she was pregnant. Her mentor Jo, was also lots of fun. Kathy and Connor did become close, as she was determined to find a way to save him. They are racing against the clock, with Kathy, Jo, Simon and Connor investigate those who may be from the SCYTHE people; as she uncovers clues that could reveal what is happening. I do not want to give any more information, as it could ruin the story for you.
What follows is an exciting tense climax, with a few twists and turns along the way. A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer was a fun story, with some humor, mystery, suspense and a bit of romance. A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer was very well written by Maxi Dara. As noted, this was a fun enjoyable story line, which I suggest you read.
Reviewed by Barb
Copy provided by Publisher
438 Melrose Court
I tapped the address in my file with the lid of the pen I’d been chewing on. Beside the front door of the sandy beige new build, swirly metal numerals confirmed my location. Four three eight. Weird. Definitely the right number, but this was all wrong. I turned from the house and glanced down the manicured lawn to the street sign across the road. It promised in no uncertain terms that this was Melrose Court, just as it was supposed to be. I shut my file with a defeated sigh and went back in through the open door a second time.
“Hello?” I called yet again as I stomped through the kitchen. It was a kitchen that belonged on a show about kitchens more than in somebody’s house: clean and white and open-concept, leading out into the high-ceilinged living room beyond. The “after” on a home renovation show. Not even a spoon in the sink or a crumb on the countertops. Which made the body sprawled across the tiled floor look even more out of place.
Now, slap a corpse on the floor of my dingy apartment kitchen and you wouldn’t bat an eye, at least in my line of work. But in a place like this, a dead body really spoils the ambience.
I rounded the island and reopened my file.
Case # 507032
Conner Mateo Ortiz
Age: 17
Cause of death: Seizure
Time to Collect: 4:30 p.m.
“Conner?” My voice ricocheted off the stainless steel and marble surrounding me. I crouched by the body and attempted to hover in a squat, but my left knee protested my weight with a defiant pop, and I wobbled forward. “Nope, nope, nope,” I muttered to myself, “no falling on bodies today. Not after last time.” I lowered myself to my steadily widening bum by 507032’s head. His rich brown locks fell over one closed eye, a spattering of freckles on his nose. I sighed, one hand at my stomach. Poor kid. He looked younger than his age lying there, long lashes pressed above bronze cheeks still full with the last remnants of baby fat. I’d found his basement bedroom not ten minutes earlier; a gallery of posters and mess and potential. It always felt wrong when they were young. Like their bodies should still have some life left in them. But of course, they didn’t. That’s why I was there.
Still, he was going to make me late, and the last man to make me late was the very reason I needed to get back to the office and then on my way home on time.
“Conner?” I tried again. Nothing. The house shuddered at my voice and fell still.
My phone vibrated in my back trouser pocket and I nearly puked, though I wasn’t entirely sure the two were related. I scrambled for the phone and hauled myself to my feet.
Simon. He got the table for six thirty instead of seven. Of course he did. Shit. If we weren’t already in the middle of a divorce, I’d consider filing over this.
This wasn’t the way it normally worked-the way it always worked. Death, for all its unpredictability and unknowns, was remarkably routine on my end. It was one of the things I loved most about my job. Someone under my department’s jurisdiction dies, I get the paperwork, carry out the collection, write up a report for Stu, and am on the couch watching Family Feud with a bowl of canned tomato soup by five thirty. That’s how it was, how it always had been for the six years I’d been a Collections Agent with S.C.Y.T.H.E. But somehow today was different. Case 507032 was different.
I glanced back over the boy. My client files were always pared down to need-to-know information, and in my position, there isn’t much I need to know. But it seemed clear enough from the body-long-limbed and dressed in faded jeans and a gray hoodie-that aside from his family’s apparent wealth, 507032 was your average, unremarkable teenaged boy. So the question was, why wasn’t he here?
I did a second tour through the house, Conner Ortiz’s name bouncing back to me in my own voice from the high ceilings of every starkly furnished room. By the time I’d circled back into the kitchen, it was after five.
“Conner,” I said into the definitively empty house, “I’m sorry.”
I closed my file for the last time and left 438 Melrose Court.
Excerpted from A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer by Maxie Dara Copyright © 2024 by Maxie Dara. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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