Hello to all the Story Empire readers! It’s my turn at the Friday Book Share and I’ve been holding onto a couple of books for over a month so I’m excited to post about them today.

Both of the books I’ve chosen are the first two in a series which caught me eye around Christmas. I read the sample of the first one which hooked me from the first page. I read the book in about a day, then moved to the next one soon after and read it just as fast. Both are tightly-written detective novels with a twist.

The author is Anne Frasier who has penned the Detective Jude Fontaine Mysteries. The premise revolves around main character, Jude Fontaine who was abducted and held prisoner for three years before escaping – which is where The Body Reader begins. Jude has honed a higher sense of observing and interpreting non-verbal and verbal cues from people because of her confinement, a way of surviving. Jude also sees aspects of victims that communicates clues inform her about details of the case. It’s a raw story, one which follows her physical and emotional recovery from the harrowing experience as she rebuilds her former detective career. Tension oozes from the pages while she investigates a new murder and those which are older, going back decades in a few cases. I include the blurbs for the books in quotes:

“For three years, Detective Jude Fontaine was kept from the outside world. Held in an underground cell, her only contact was with her sadistic captor, and reading his face was her entire existence. Learning his every line, every movement, and every flicker of thought is what kept her alive.

After her experience with isolation and torture, she is left with a fierce desire for justice—and a heightened ability to interpret the body language of both the living and the dead. Despite colleagues’ doubts about her mental state, she resumes her role at Homicide. Her new partner, Detective Uriah Ashby, doesn’t trust her sanity, and he has a story of his own he’d rather keep hidden. But a killer is on the loose, murdering young women, so the detectives have no choice: they must work together to catch the madman before he strikes again. And no one knows madmen like Jude Fontaine.” Find it on Amazon.

The series continues with The Body Counter when Jude is drawn into a series of grisly murders where the count of victims increases with each incident:

“Months after discovering the mastermind behind her own kidnapping, Detective Jude Fontaine is dealing with the past the only way she knows how: by returning to every dark corner of it. But it’s a new, escalating series of mass slayings that has become her latest obsession at Homicide.

At first, Jude and her partner, Detective Uriah Ashby, can see no pattern to the seemingly random methods, the crime scenes, or the victims—until they’re approached by a brilliantly compulsive math professor. He believes that the madman’s next move is not incalculable; in fact, it’s all part of a sequential and ingenious numerical riddle. His theory is adding up. The body count is rising.

But when the latest victim is found in Jude’s apartment, the puzzle comes with a personal twist that’s going to test the breaking point of her already-fragile state of mind. For all she knows, her number may be up.” Find it on Amazon.

Bonus share! The next edition is out in June and I’m very interested. I do like the occasional mystery but these grabbed me and held my attention. Jude is a highly compelling character and Frasier has done an excellent job with each book so far.

 “A boy’s frozen body is found trapped in the ice of a Minneapolis lake. The horrifying discovery leads Detective Jude Fontaine and her partner, Uriah Ashby, to more bodies in the ice, all of twelve-year-old boys missing for twenty years.

Then, in one of the worst blizzards the city has ever seen, a four-year-old is abandoned on Jude’s doorstep. The child can’t tell them where he’s from, who his parents are, or how he got there. He doesn’t even know his name.

But in his unspoken language, Jude reads something horrifying—a connection to the dead boys. Now a four-year-old with no name may be the only key to a twenty-year-old, very cold case.” Pre-order on Amazon.

Interested?  Your kind of read? Share your comments in the comments and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks for taking part in the Friday Book Share. Search Story Empire for previous posts for our other picks. Additionally, since this is book share day, two of our authors recently published new books that you may not have noticed: Voyage of the Lanternfish by C. S. Boyack and End of Day by Mae Clair. These are excellent reads so have a look at them and share the word!