Ashes to Ashes

Pendleton, creator of the bestselling Executioner series, begins a new sequence with this novel featuring Ashton Ford, ex-spy, exNavy officer, with psychic powers. His first case concerns heiress Karen Highland: is she unhinged or is she being manipulated by the family's estate executor, Terry Kalinsky, and her psychiatrist, Carl Powell? After several deaths, Ford traces most of her problems to Powell's reckless use of hypnosis. Unfortunately, the first-person narrator is a cross between a hardboiled detective and Rod Serling: what is presented as self-deprecating is actually self-glorifying, and Ford tends to explain the obvious and lecture the reader. The few intriguing sparks are dampened by soggy exposition and theorizing. Major ad/promo. (April)