The Vengeful Dead

Title ~ The Vengeful Dead
Series ~ Jackie Rutledge, #2
Author ~ J.N. Duncan
Publisher ~ Kensington
Published ~ 4 October 2011
Genre ~ Urban Fantasy/Paranormal

My Rating ~ 4 bites out of 5

Jackie Rutledge is a Chicago FBI agent whose psychic partner was killed by a psychotic vampire. Though Laurel isn’t truly gone since she’s stuck around in ghost form. While in pursuit of the psychotic vampire Jackie died and came back, but brought some of Deadworld with her. She needs to figure out what her freaky new abilities can do, but there’s an enraged ghost on the loose who has possessed a cop. She’s dealing out vengeance to those her killed her and ripped her baby from her womb. Jackie is on leave due to her breakdown after Laurel’s death and her own death-then-come-back-to-life incident, but since she’s climbing the walls she agrees to come in to consult on the paranormal aspect of the case. In Rosa the Enraged Ghost Jackie gets much more than she bargained for. On top of all that, she’s been assigned a new partner, Agent Ryan McManus and she can’t decide if she’s ready to date Nick Anderson the cowboy vampire private investigator. Welcome to Jackie’s life.

The writing is good and the plot is fast. Our favorite characters are back and we get a new agent. We don’t learn a whole lot about Jackie’s new abilities, but we do learn a bit and Jackie isn’t quite as unappealing in this book as in Deadworld. She’s still stubborn enough I want to smack her occasionally, but she is slowly growing and adapting to her new circumstances. The whole ghost possession arc is fascinating, but boy is Rosa a piece of work. Yikes! All-in-all I’m enjoying this series very much and look forward to the next case that lands in Jackie’s lap.

*Many thanks to Kensington for providing a review copy. Please see disclaimer page.