Guest Reviewed by Morgan
Title: Fish and Ghosts
Author: Rhys Ford
Series: Hellsinger #1
Heroes: Tristan Pryce and Wolf Kinkaid
Genre: M/M Urban Fantasy
Length: 240 Pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: December 30, 2013
Available at: Dreamspinner Press, Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads
Blurb: When his Uncle Mortimer died and left him Hoxne Grange, the family’s Gilded Age estate, Tristan Pryce knew he wasn’t going to have an easy time of it. He was to be the second generation of Pryces to serve as a caretaker for the estate, a way station for spirits on their final steps to the afterlife. The ghosts were the simple part. He’d been seeing boo-wigglies since he was a child. No, the difficult part was his own family. Determined to establish Tristan’s insanity, his loving relatives hire Dr. Wolf Kincaid and his paranormal researchers, Hellsinger Investigations, to prove the Grange is not haunted.
Skeptic Wolf Kincaid has made it his life’s work to debunk the supernatural. After years of cons and fakes, he can’t wait to reveal the Grange’s ghostly activity is just badly leveled floorboards and a drafty old house. The Grange has more than a few surprises for him, including its prickly, reclusive owner. Tristan Pryce is much less insane and much more attractive than Wolf wants to admit and when his Hellsinger team unwittingly release a ghostly serial killer on the Grange, Wolf is torn between his skepticism and protecting the man he’d been sent to discredit.
Review:
Like fish and house-guests, ghosts get old after 3 days.
Wolf is in the business of discrediting people who claim to have hauntings. He has his own reasons for doing this, some of which are very personal, so he takes his job seriously. When he is offered the job to prove that Tristan Pryce is either lying or insane in order to save a family estate, he jumps at the chance.
Tristan is a man orphaned early in life and only loved/understood by one black-sheep uncle. Uncle Morty eventually bequeaths him a bizarre inn near San Francisco. This inn doesn’t provide an income. It rarely fills with living people but is often full with souls who have been long gone from their bodies, and even the ghostly residents steal the towels! Instead, Tristan writes children’s books, full of colorful and creative, fuzzy monsters. Neither the inn nor the children’s books help with Tristan’s claim of sanity.
When the two meet, there is some instant chemistry, and it doesn’t take long before the virginal Tristan and the skeptical Wolf become intimately acquainted. Just in time, it turns out, because members of Wolf’s team accidentally set off ghost Armageddon, and they definitely need to all work as a team to stop the spectral disaster.
Rhys Ford has a poetic and flowing writing style that never fails to blow me out of the water. I am continually in awe of her talent. Though this story has some fascinating supernatural elements (ghosts), the main story type is not so different from her Cole McGinnis or Sinner’s Gin series. Wolf is an investigator and Tristan is an artist caught in the line of fire. I loved the addition of the supernatural to the detective story – Rhys excels at creepiness, and her ability to interweave people from all along the axis of time is a fantastic twist.
There are several secondary characters who try to steal the show: Mara, Jack, Boris, and Meegan to name a few. I am glad to see there is already a sequel, as the two MCs have a lot of chemistry to explore, and I’d love to see more of them and the whole crew. I’m especially interested in the bread trail Rhys has laid leading us to the enticing cousin, Cin, who hopefully gets his own book one day.
Another fun Fish and Ghosts Fact – there is at least one Sinner’s Gin and one Cole McGinnis reference in this book – I’m sure you’ll be able to spot them!
Overall Impression: It was amazing!
*I purchased my own, personal copy of this book for review.*
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