Genre:
Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance/Mystery
Description:
“Danny
Mancini is on a case, following a murder suspect. When he catches
him, he finds out that the perp isn't even human: he's a 200 year old
rogue vampire!
The
department doesn't believe him, and puts him on early retirement,
despite his many years of service to the Chicago Police Department,
which sends him into a downward spiral.
Two years
later, Danny gets an invitation from the beautiful, young and very
attractive Detective Angelica Cross to join a secret branch of the
FBI to help her track down Vincent, the wayward vamp.
But
renegade werewolves, meddling immortal witches and Danny's strange
visions of a life lived a century ago with Angelica make things more
difficult than it should be.”
Author:
“Lily
Luchesi is a young author/poet born in Chicago, Illinois, now
residing in Los Angeles, California…She is also a hopeless romantic
and avid music-love who will always associate vampires with love,
blood, and rock and roll…She finished her first manuscript at the
age of fourteen, and now, at twenty-one, has two contributing credits
in anthologies and her debut novel, Stake-Out
(Paranormal Detectives Series
Book One), was published by
Vamptasy Publishing on May 19th, 2015. Book two, Miranda's
Rights, was released on
January 8th, 2016.”
To learn
more please check out Ms. Luchesi’s website or Facebook page.
Appraisal:
Stake-Out
has an interesting storyline
with well-developed characters. Past information was doled out, when
needed, at a nice pace. Detective Danny Mancini had been ostracized
from the Chicago Police Department for two years after his report
involving a rogue vampire. Why it took Angelica Cross two years to
approach Danny is left more or less unclear, especially after
learning their past history.
Angelica is
an agent in a special FBI unit that investigates, monitors, and
controls paranormal creatures who don’t live within the law, known
as the PID (Paranormal Investigative Division). Danny reluctantly
agrees to join forces with the young beautiful agent to bring justice
for the victims of this one rogue vampire, known as Vincent.
I think
this story has promise, however I ran into a few problems that a good
editor and a few beta readers should have or could have cleared up.
First, but not foremost, were all of the exclamation points during
the narrative. At first they were laughable but they quickly became
an irritation. Exclamation points are acceptable in dialogue, not so
much in the narrative portions of the story. Second, there were a few
wrong words or missing words. Third, and foremost, was the small nest
of vampires in Lombard. Despite being told the nest used to include
six vampires Danny and Angelica learn that there was now a new
leader, which took the number down to five. However, our heroes end
up fighting six vampires, who Ms. Lechesi was kind enough to give
names to as they were destroyed. Honestly, five is not that hard of a
number to keep track of and I had a big issue with this. This was a
continuity problem that should have been picked up during the editing
process.
In spite of
the editing issues I came across, I think this was a good story that
deserves some more attention. The main plot came to a successful
close, more or less. There was a big info dump at the end as Danny
was overtaken by precognitive insight, which explained why he felt so
strongly drawn to Angelica. Their relationship was left in limbo at
the end, which offered a continuation to the story. I have decided to
call endings like this a soft cliffhanger. Fortunately there is a
second book ready for those who want to jump right back in for more.
FYI:
Stake-Out
is book one of the Paranormal
Detectives Series. For those
who are concerned, there are a few F-bombs and sexual situations are
behind closed doors.
Format/Typo
Issues:
These are
mentioned above in the body of my review and did result in the loss
of a star.
Rating:
*** Three Stars
Reviewed
by: ?wazithinkin
Approximate
word count: 40-45,000 words
