Seven Kinds of Hell

Zoe is an archeologist with supernatural gifts that she calls her Beast and anyone else would call lycanthropy. The death of her mother forces on Zoe an unsought reconciliation with her father’s Fangborn family, the genetic source of the Beast. Just as she begins to realize that her mother’s hostility to the Fangborn might be misguided, Zoe is targeted by the genuine monster of the book, an ambitious Russian gangster named Dmitri Parshin, who demands Zoe find and deliver the means by which he can become a werewolf. With her cousin Danny’s life on the line, Zoe travels around the world toward a rendezvous with that occult artifact known as Pandora’s Box. The first urban fantasy novel by crime fiction author Cameron (Ashes and Bones) offers very little novelty for longtime readers of paranormal fiction, and the story is derivative and predictable, told in workmanlike prose. Agent: Josh Getzler, Hannigan Salky Getzler. (Mar.)