Book Review: An Inner Fire by Jacki Delecki

Grayce Walters Book 1

Grayce Walters, animal acupuncturist, harbors a secret. She hides her intuitive gifts from the world until she becomes embroiled in arson on Seattle’s waterfront.

As a key crime witness, Grayce must convince the attractive, logical, by-the-numbers fire investigator, Ewan Davis,that the fire she witnessed is part of a larger criminal conspiracy. Grayce embarks upon a mission to gather proof of the dangerous threat. She enlists the help of her cross-dressing best friend, her street-wise assistant, and Davis’ poodle, to conduct her own investigation.

As her feelings for Davis shift between white hot passion and cold fear, Grayce must risk exposing her secrets to save Davis’ life. Davis must accept things, he can neither see, nor understand to solve the mystery and finally find the love he has stopped believing in.

With nudges from the protective poodle, Grayce and Davis confront shocking betrayal and international crime on the rain soaked streets of Seattle.

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My Review:

If you look as this book as a cozy mystery that’s trying to be a bunch of other things as well, you can probably suspend disbelief for long enough to enjoy the story. This is why this makes me think of cozy mysteries: we have a lay person heroine who sticks her nose into the middle of a criminal investigation, certain that the authorities CAN’T investigate this as well as her. Rather than having the requisite ghostly sidekick, she has extrasensory perceptions of her own. In the place of quirky sidekicks, we have her gay best friend, a former street-kid assistant, an overprotective poodle, and a haughty Maine Coon cat. (I think the pets were some of the best characters in the book.) And our love-at-first-sight romantic lead is the first responder who has to clean up the disasters our plucky heroine keeps ending up in. And no matter how catastrophic the mistake she makes, he’s still willing to forgive her and love her forever. The mystery itself felt more thriller than mystery to me because we knew pretty much from the beginning who the villains were, and the story was largely a race to see if they would be caught in time. There really isn’t anything remotely realistic about it, but it was fun.