Review: Crone's Moon (M.R. Sellars)

Sellars does it again.

If you haven't discovered the Rowan Gant mystery series, hie thee hence to your local bookstore and demand it. Get your hands on this series. You will have to read them in order, but you won't mind in the slightest. This series never fails to be a page-turning, heart-thumping read, and CRONE'S MOON delivers once again.

So who is M.R. Sellars? He wrote the first Rowan Gant mystery, HARM NONE, and tried to sell New York on the idea of a practicing Wiccan as the detective. New York was... New York. Thus the series went to the small press, and thank Goddess. :) (And if I have to put in my usual disclaimer that Wicca does not equal Satan-worshipping, I will thump you.)

Rowan Gant faces another serial killer in CRONE'S MOON, but more than any previous book, he's facing the killer on the mystical plane instead of the flesh-and-blood world of police forensics. Sellars always has the note of realism in his police procedurals, but with this book Gant is almost entirely away from the crime scenes, fighting to stay alive through psychic impressions of the victims' deaths. Only this time, wife Felicity is experiencing them as well.

I took this book on vacation with me, and had it finished within a day. I couldn't stop. These books are not romances, but they are romantic in the most traditional sense, with the main arguments between Rowan and Felicity circling over who gets to risk his or her life for the other this time. Sellars makes us feel Rowan's torment, watching his wife suffer what he has suffered through four books now, unable to stop it and afraid it will take her from him.

The only place where CRONE'S MOON fails and the previous books have succeeded is in the force responsible for the deaths. Unlike previous books, the killer (and I'm trying hard not to give it away) is nearly background, a simple force impelling Rowan and Felicity on their dangerous path. But it hardly diminishes the experience.

If you're a fan of mysteries, police procedurals, supernatural thrillers or just plain good books, pick up CRONE'S MOON. Oh, after you pick up the first four books. You won't be disappointed.

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