Synopsis
Bestseller Melanie Rawn plunges down the back stairs of the old South into a dark world of family secrets and the international flesh trade that lies underneath the surface of small town politics and romance.
Holly McClure and Evan Lachlan have survived the fiery beginning of their romance and left Manhattan for Holly’s ancestral home to raise their children. Evan’s the county Sheriff; Holly is still a trouble-making Spellbinder trying to manipulate her family as if they were characters in one of her novels.
But something’s not right in Pocahontas County. Churches are being burned down in mysterious arsons with a taint of magic on them. Sheriff Lachlan suspects that they have something to do with the new owners of the old Westmoreland plantation, now a very upscale Inn, but even if he could find proof, it’s going to be hard to bring a case of Black Magic before a Judge — even in Pocahontas County, where witchcraft is the family business of all the oldest clans.
Publishers Weekly
Smalltown politics and big-city newcomers mix badly with a family of rural magicians in this dreary modern fantasy. Bestselling author Holly Lachlan has come home to Pocahontas County, Va., with her adoring husband, Evan (a former U.S. marshal, now the county sheriff). Together they attend a fund-raising party at an antebellum mansion turned into an upscale inn by a strange German investor. Herr Weiss's hotel is chock-full of sinister secrets, and the assembled guests-including a charming DA and some of Holly's magically endowed relatives-must combine forces to investigate. The premise has promise, but the mystery elements don't gain much of a foothold until late in the game, and Rawn (Spellbinder) frequently interrupts them with vast swaths of left-wing political pontification, elaborate matchmaking attempts and cutesy fawning between the protagonists. (Apr.)
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