Dead Man Rising

Dead Man Rising (2006) Lilith Saintcrow

Dante Valentine has been taking on case after case to try and forget what happened to her in Rio. Unfortunately for her, it’s not working. She and Jace are keeping busy–and she’s all but running Jace into the ground–but she still can’t keep Japh off her mind.

Things get even worse when her friend Gabe calls her in to help with a case–one of the four necromances in the city has been brutally murdered, and Gabe can’t reach her and hopes Danny can.

Things get even worse when Danny realizes she’s going to have to deal with part of her past that she thought she’d buried so deep it’d never come up.

I read the first book, Working for the Devil over a year ago, ordered the second book in the series, and then somehow never got around to reading it. A discussion with a friend reminded me that I had Dead Man Rising and hadn’t yet read it, so I picked it up.

As I’ve wondered about other books, what the heck was I waiting for? Now I have to admit that the last book I finished was a little bit of a disappointment, so I was ready to be taken in by fast pacing and good writing. But it’s more than that. This story is very well written. The underlying mystery is good, and the characters are better than I remember from the first book.

Dante is still bitchy and unpleasant, but she has reason to be. And IIRC, one of the things that annoyed me about her in the first book was that she refused to listen to anyone else. That wasn’t a problem in this book. Not that it does her a lot of good, but she tries to listen, and even though it’s very difficult for her, she tries to share–as best she can–with those around her.

One thing I particularly liked is that the book did a very good job dealing with a very difficult subject, and that is the abuse of children by an authority figure. She also did a very good job of making you feel what the characters were feeling–something that not all authors are good at.

It’s been a year, so the fine details of the first book are vague in my mind, but I was able to jump right into the story despite that. Does this mean you could read Dead Man Rising without having read the first book? I think you probably could.
Rating: 8/10

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