Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1838182 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 280 pages

Customer Reviews

Move over, Monk and Sharona -- here comes Holmes and Storm!
"Bad Lands" is a marvelous mystery/thriller debut by the writing team of Selina Rosen and Laura J. Underwood. Known for their SF and fantasy novels, Rosen and Underwood team up to deliver a gut-punch of a thriller featuring the unlikely pairing of Vivian Storm, a salty police sketch artist with the ability to "see" the last moments of someone's death, and Maggie Holmes, a forensic pathologist in a money crunch.

When Holmes signs the pair up for a reality show set on the "haunted" Knight Island, things turn bloody as someone -- or something -- starts slaughtering the show's contestants one by one, mimicking the previous massacres on the island. Now Holmes and Storm must solve a 10-year-old mystery if they want to get off the island alive.

If you like tautly paced mysteries, snappy dialogue and one of the most ingenious pairings since Monk and Sharona Fleming, you'll love "Bad Lands".

Badlands a place you should visit
Its rare that I find a book that I cannot put down. But Badlands was one of these books. I started out wanting a nice whodunnit for bedtime reading, and soon I found myself carrying this book with me everywhere and reading it in snatches of stolen time while at the Doctor's office and in the check out line at the supermarket.

The unreliable narrator is done very well in this book, with each author trading up writing duties on the chapters and setting them in the viewpoint of their character.

Although Vivian Storm kept me in stitches with her quirks (Including giving everyone and every thing an alternate name, from dubbing Kennedy, the producer of Chicken Out "Dead President Guy" to describing Maggie's ghostbusting equipment "spectrowhatzits".), Maggie Holmes isn't without her own humor. As the bodies start to stack up and the game falls apart, the seemingly level-headed Maggie bemoans the fact that the murders are interrupting her scientific investigation of the island.

I recommend Bad Lands to anyone who enjoys a fast-paced thriller.

Raw, straight-forward, unpretentious, and fun!
This is a collaboration between two talented authors you should know about. I've been a fan of Selina Rosen's since picking up Queen of Denial. This is my first read of Laura Underwood, and I'm glad of the introduction.

The book is written from the perspective of two characters alternating chapters. The two are friends, from seemingly different worlds (one, a widow with grown children, the other, a wild single bartender proud of being a "butch lesbian") linked by their unusual work, interests, and ability in crime scene forensics. Each author writes a character.

The story itself is interesting and quite good -- Maggie wants to investigate Knight Island's potential paranormal activity for a book on the subject, but the only way to do it is to drag Vivian, who can feel the aftereffects of death in the hot spots where it happened, with her on a TV reality show. Except, they got more than they bargained for...

The characters are fun and well written - the approach of each author writing one of the characters works very well. The result is a fast-paced thriller that retains a sense of humor.

Seriously, this is a good read. Recommended to anyone who likes a good murder mystery thriller, has a sense of humor, and isn't a stick-in-the-mud.