Reviewed by Sarina
TITLE: The Ghosts of Alcatraz
AUTHOR: Carol Lynne
PUBLISHER: Wilde City Press
LENGTH: 104 pages
BLURB:
Suffocation, mutilation and dismemberment aren’t the normal outside influences that bring two people together, but inside the newly refurbished Alcatraz Prison, anything can happen.
Inmates begin dying in shocking and sometimes gruesome ways. The deaths prompt Warden Jensen Black to bring in sexy parapsychologist, Brian Phipps. With the help of Brian, Jensen hopes to get to the bottom of what is killing the men he is responsible for. What he didn’t count on is falling and falling hard for the smaller man with the heart of a lion.
The attraction between the two men is instantaneous, but before they could fully explore the depths of their passion, the ghosts set their sites on Brian. As their relationship begins to heat up, the danger escalates, leaving both men to wonder if they’ll ever make it off Alcatraz alive.
REVIEW:
Jensen Black is the warden for the newly renovated Alcatraz and most days he really likes his job. When inmates begin dying in horrifying ways that defy explanation, he caves and calls for some help. Brian Phipps has dealt with ghosts and paranormal activity quite a bit; you could even say it runs in the family. He isn’t sure what to expect when he arrives at Alcatraz but it becomes clear fairly quickly that the ghosts aren’t the only thing he needs to watch out for. Dealing with Alcatraz will be hard, but letting himself fall for Jensen will be harder.
I’m really glad I got the chance to go back and read this after having already reviewed The Claiming of Patrick Donnelly. In this first book we get the chance to know both Jensen and Brian, two characters that featured heavily in the next book. While on the shorter side, I did like this book a bit better than the other; there is still violence but it isn’t as overwhelming and I had no problems with the relationship between the two main characters. Jensen is a protector down to his core and it shows; he doesn’t want anyone to get hurt be they inmate or someone else. Brian, on the other hand, has spent most of his life avoiding emotional entanglements due to the nature of his paranormal work but he still doesn’t hesitate to reach out and take what he wants when he realized just what Jensen could mean to him. The character interactions were decent but things do move really quickly due to the size of the book and I would’ve like to have seen a more in depth explanation about everything going on. A word of caution, however; there are mentions of past rape though nothing graphic is seen and there is also a scene that skirts infidelity but nothing actually happened. If those bother you, you have been warned. This was a decent read and I might go back and read it again in the future; I definitely recommend starting with this before moving onto Fisher’s story, however.
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