This well-crafted, medium-boiled addition to Edgar nominee Lynch's (Bragg's Hunch) Peter Bragg series employs a premise that readers will either accept or reject: the use of a professional psychic in a criminal investigation. Former San Francisco Chronicle
reporter Bragg is contacted by a local psychic he once talked out of committing suicide, Maribeth Robbins, who's been having a series of disturbing visions about dead bodies buried in the nearby woods. Maribeth fears she might be next. Bragg takes her story to the police, whose immediate and enthusiastic support seems a tad unrealistic. Working with pretty female detective Merle Adams, Bragg is able to narrow down the location to the Jack London State Park, where multiple corpses are unearthed close to London's mansion, the Wolf House, which mysteriously burned to the ground in 1913. As fresh bodies continue to turn up, Bragg and Adams find themselves scrambling to stay one step ahead of the killer. Readers expecting a lot of Jack London lore will find only a perfunctory page of biographical material. Lynch is on to something interesting, however, when he compares police intuition with psychic foresight. In many ways the processes seem similar, especially in the way that a detective's mind shifts into the subconscious when assembling the pieces of an investigation. (POD)
