CBR6 #9: Paradise Denied by John L. French

I am going to admit up front that the only reason I decided to read this is that it was available on Kindle for free. I was on the train and out of reading material, and this didn't look entirely terrible. Also: FREE.

I got lucky this time.

Normally, I don't like short stories. Often the medium leaves me frustrated and unfulfilled. The stories end before I'm ready to leave them, or they simply don't capture my attention because they're working too hard to cram in too much. However, this collection of paranormal short stories by former Baltimore CSI John French was about fifty times better than I expected it to be. The stories were all well-written and interesting, and several were also very funny.

French's background in crime scene investigation was often evident in his stories of police or detectives faced with the supernatural, including one in which a confidential informant dies, is resurrected in order to give his testimony...and then manages to escape from the morgue to wander the streets. There's stories of vampires, faeries, and zombies mixed in with tales of detectives trying to solve their cases. When the world's dead rise, what are their legal rights, and who can they turn to to solve their murders? Who is peddling dangerous magical drugs on the streets, and what's their motive? How far should a detective go to unmask a local super-hero, when the motive is pure politics?

The characters in each story were distinctive and interesting, and while each story was satisfying in itself, I definitely would have been happy to follow any of the main characters along into other pieces.

On the whole, this was a fantastic book for a paranormal fan who also has a functional brain.