November End Reads

If only I could be a full-time blogger...but, alas, real life seems to get in the way and then I have to do a mad rush job to get caught up. Well, here were my latest reads rounding out November:

LAST KNOWN VICTIM by Erica Spindler (Mira, c2007, ISBN 978-0-7783-2461-4).
Set in New Orleans, LA and apparently a continuation of characters from a previous book that I didn't read, though this book worked just fine as a stand-alone. Captain Patti O'Shay's husband is found dead during Hurricane Katrina. Fast forward two years and his badge and gun are retrieved from under a female victim unearthed. Yvette Borger is receiving threatening notes from The Artist and those she turns to for help wind up dead. Unfortunately, she cried wolf one too many times and no one is believing her. But there is a bad person lurking around and they are all up to their necks in trouble in the Big Easy. Good story, quick paced and I liked the characters. I will eventually read the previous story/stories they are in.

First sentence:

The gods were watching over New Orleans.

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER by Shari Shattuck (Signet, c2007, ISBN 978-0-451-22199-5)is set in Shadow Hills, California -- a suburb of Los Angeles (I thought it was a fictional place. It's not. Google it.)
Greer and Joshua Sands, mother and son, have recently moved to Shadow Hills to put the past behind them and to open Greer's second beauty salon, when they both have visions of a dangerous element in town. Then a teenage girl goes missing - to be found, battered, abused, branded and left for dead. And then again, the girl across the street goes missing. But is it the same bad guy or something else?
This was a great, quick read although I found it to be overwritten at times -- too much description. I do, though, love a good psychic story.

It begins:

Thursday
The Eye of the Beholder Beauty Salon and Day Spa opened for business on an ominous Thursday in January.