By Liv Stecker
Leave it to local author Kerry Schafer to take paranormal to the the next level. Not content with a run-of-the-mill cast of characters, Shafer veers from the beaten path in her latest mystery: Dead Before Dying. Written after something of a dare from her friend, the author introduces us to Maureen Keslyn, a spunky, if perhaps past-her-prime FBI agent who give a whole new meaning to “coming of age”. Wounded on duty, Keslyn finds an unlikely place to recuperate after her personal life after turns upside down, in a retirement home for the well to do - or maybe the ne’er do well…
On an undercover assignment, Keslyn soon finds herself entangled in a bigger struggle between the natural and supernatural than she bargained for. Replete with geriatric vampires, a small community with dark secrets and ties to her past that are more complex than she realized, the heroine is up against tougher and more unusual villains than she has faced in her somewhat unusual FBI experience.
Schafer breathes new life into the retirement setting, reminding her audience that there is life and passion beyond the memories of an aging generation, and perhaps even after death. Wildly imaginative, Dead Before Dying introduces a spectrum of paranormal activity even more varied than the dragons, time travelers and a magical penguin from her first trilogy, The Books of the Between. In addition to the supernatural characters, Maureen Keslyn finds allies in a sharp local sheriff, a useful veteran, and an otherworldly undertaker’s daughter.
An unexpectedly delightful glimpse at what goes on behind the closed doors of a sleepy little town, Schafer winds her story through secret passageways, top secret government experiments and a dark plot masquerading behind a religious front. As always, Schafer blends local references into the storyline, using her broad experience as a nurse and her psychology background as a storytelling platform.
Maureen Keslyn and her story open a whole new avenue of adventure and intruige that came as something of a surprise even to Schafer herself, as the character launches what readers can only hope will be the first of many supernatural adventures. Who says retirement is boring?
Get Dead Before Dying on Amazon in digital or printed format, or Barnes and Noble in Spokane.
https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Before-Dying-Kerry-Schafer/dp/1626819289
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