SECOND SIGHT

Her fourth adventure (Lost Girls, 2008, etc.) brings blind sleuth Sherry Moore back to the kingdom of the sighted.

Sherry was five when an accidental blow to her head managed to jar, jumble and rearrange the wiring in her brain. Though the health of her eyes was unaffected, she’s been blind for 32 years, a handicap with one astonishing compensation. She’s a memory catcher: Place a dead person’s hand in hers, and she can visualize that person’s last memories. Sherry’s achieved a certain fame for her prowess; law enforcement has found her a valuable consultant in a variety of knotty murder cases; and she loves being able to do the inexplicable thing she does better than anyone else. But now, following a second traumatic incident, Sherry is suddenly able to see once more. How is such a change possible? How long will it last? There are no ready answers, but she knows that the mysterious soldier whose lifeless hand she was holding at the time is key. It turns out, however, that powerful people with despicable crimes to hide will stop at nothing to keep this particular dead man from telling tales, and that Sherry, sighted, is not quite the force against evil she once was.

Sherry’s response to her new status is too ambivalent to believe, which makes her unconvincing for the first time in this much respected series.