The Covenant: A Jackie Lyons Mystery

In Crook’s impressive second Jackie Lyons mystery (after 2012’s The Sleeping and the Dead), Jackie, who was once a vice cop in the Memphis PD, has hit bottom. She’s an ex-junkie, living in a fleabag motel. She struggles to support herself from photographing “accident victims and overdoses” for the police and insurance companies and is haunted by her ability to see ghosts. When she visits an upscale estate for an assignment to take pictures of an antebellum house, Jackie sees a man stagger and fall into a lake. Her account of what she observed arouses the suspicions of the local sheriff after it becomes obvious that the man, Sam Loftin, died several hours before this incident. Jackie is further disturbed to learn that five years earlier Loftin’s daughter took her life at the very same spot that his ended. Jackie is a compellingly flawed lead, and Crook convincingly incorporates the supernatural into a nicely hard-edged noir. [em]Agent: Peter Riva, International Transactions. (Jan.) [/em]