Book Review: "Harmony Black" by Craig Schaefer

I was able to read this book through Amazon's Kindle First program. Thanks to Amazon and 47North for making it available!

Harmony Black is a slightly uptight, by-the-books FBI agent. Well, as by-the-books as you can be when you're a practicing witch.

Harmony is an operative for a secret program called Vigilant Lock, which was created to battle occult threats—by any means necessary. She's very good at her job, saving society from the monsters that threaten to harm it, but being good at her job means having to destroy people—living and undead—and that is starting to take its toll.

She is unprepared for the emotional toll of her next assignment, however, when she becomes part of a team tasked with hunting down the Bogeyman, a tremendously dangerous creature with a penchant for stealing young babies from their unsuspecting parents, and then disappearing. Harmony knows the Bogeyman all too well, as it had a tragic affect on her childhood, and although she wants to make the creature pay for his crimes, she is conflicted about returning to her hometown of Talbot Cove to do this.

It's not just the Bogeyman that Harmony needs to worry about, however; it appears Talbot Cove is home to more than a few other creatures, including shape-shifting, body-borrowing demons and cambion. All of them are sure to make life for her and her new team pretty miserable—and very dangerous.

I thought this was a lot of fun, and Harmony is a really unique and appealing character. I've never read anything that Craig Schaefer has written before, but apparently Harmony is a character introduced in another of his series. (If you are a fan of Schaefer's series featuring Daniel Faust, be sure you're caught up before reading this book, because apparently there are some spoilers for that series in here.)

This book has some great action, lots of creepy stuff, and really fascinating characters. The pacing is great, too; my only challenge with the book is that there is a lot of exposition as characters explain what drives certain creatures. But it doesn't take too long before your heart starts pounding again.

If you like your crime novels with an unusual twist, and aren't put off by demons and other creatures walking among us, check out Harmony Black. She's a welcome addition to the genres this book straddles.