This deserves a bit more than four stars, 4 ¼-4 ½.

Abby and Dutch make their way down to Austin in A Glimpse of Evil, joining Abby’s best friend Candice and Dutch’s boss at the CIA, who is also Candice’s boyfriend, Brice. Aside from the usual drama brought about by whatever crimes this group is working on, there’s tons more supplied by Candice (who I didn’t remember having had an affair with a married man, which they discuss very casually, yuck) and Brice, who are trying to decide if, after a short amount of time dating and having already moved in together, they should get engaged or take a break and see other people.

Abby has given up private psychic readings and joined the FBI as a civilian profiler focusing on cold cases. Though her new job provides her with a steady income and health benefits, she must now deal with psychic work overload as well as with a bunch of agents who are beyond skeptical. There are multiple cases for Abby to deal with, brushes with death, for more than one character, old friends making appearances and more than one life-changing event taking place. Though she goes through a number of cases at her new job, the book focuses on two in particular, one involving the disappearances of two young girls and the mafia-style murders of three men. There’s definitely a lot of stuff going on in this book.

While I love these books, knowing that Laurie is a psychic (I have to squelch the urge to put quote marks around that word), I kind of roll my eyes when I read some of the stuff in them, like when Abby gets so serious about her abilities and is always able to convince everyone she’s the real deal because, yep, I’m not a believer. If the author weren’t a psychic I’d never think twice about what Abby says but I always feel like I’m being subjected to a lecture titled “Why Psychics Are Real.” Which, despite my disbelief, I can deal with because the whole psychic crime solver thing makes for a really fun read.

This was a fast read and hard to put down, even though it was fairly easy to guess what was going on with the main cases. The ending of the book sets up what will go down in the next installment, which could be very good. I love how this book was different than previous ones in that, while the characters and the use of Abby’s abilities to solve crimes are the same, new characters are added and the setting has changed. However, if Laurie really is psychic she should’ve seen that she’d be pissing off a lot of her fans by putting out her ninth book in hardcover (even if there is some reason, such as being strong-armed by her publisher). I really can’t wait to read it but am going to until it comes out in paperback.