I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an Advanced Reader Copy of Dying is a Wild Night. This is the first volume of Linger, a series of supernaturally themed thriller novels published by Braun Haus Media. The publisher is dropping the first five novels simultaneously on July 1, so if you enjoy the first (which you probably will), you'll have plenty to look forward to. I wanted to finish all five before posting reviews, because I wanted to try to get a feel for the character arcs.
As the first novel in the series, Dying is a Wild Night has the responsibility of establishing the setting and the rules of this fictional universe. The primary viewpoint character is Kate, a newly-promoted supervisory detective in a midsized California police department. Her investigation into a gruesome multiple murder brings her into contact with Weston, a traveler with an almost pathological distrust of the police, and Weston's pre-teen traveling companion, Christopher. It emerges that the three of them have two things in common. The first is that all three of their lives have been upended by the same serial killer, whom Weston and Christopher have taken to calling "the Beast." Weston's family was massacred by the Beast, Christopher was mutilated and left for dead when the Beast struck his group home, and Kate's mother may have been the Beast's first victim. I mentioned that the novels in the series are supernatural thrillers, and the second thing linking the three characters is that they all seem to be psychic to some degree. (Not to be confused with psychopathic, though there's reason to think the Beast might be both.)
This first volume is the least supernatural of the initial five. The only real supernatural aspect is the three characters' mental affinities. Christopher is the strongest of the three by a fair bit; he's both telepathic and clairvoyant, and able to activate the other two's gifts. Apart from that, which is less paranormal activity than you'd get from an average X-Files episode, the novel is a relatively straightforward murder investigation. That, by the way, isn't an insult; I rather liked the low-weirdness X-Files episodes, and this novel had the feel of one of the better ones.
The pacing is good, and the solution didn't require any improbable coincidences or playing any games with the audience. There isn't much actual character development, but I think that's by design. The story's action unfolds over a fairly short time period, and the goal for this book is, presumably, to set the stage for long term development as the series progresses. It manages to do that, while also being satisfying as a stand-alone story in its own right. When I finished this novel, I was immediately interested in moving on to the next one.
I think, strictly speaking, this series qualifies as "urban fantasy," but it doesn't quite have that vibe, particularly in this book. As I mentioned, the paranormal aspects of this fictional world are less central to this story than in subsequent books. The one criticism I have -- which applies to all five books, but I'm going to make particular note of here as this is the "origins" novel-- is that it's never entirely clear what's going on with the paranormal aspects. Straightforward sci-fi ESP? Something supernatural or religious? I think the answer might be "all of the above," but the mixture or emphasis seems to be different in each one. Part of that is plot-related, with different antagonists having different natures. Part of that is probably because of the way the series was produced. Each of the five original books is written by a different author, all five sharing the same "Edward Fallon" pen name. For the most part, the series hangs together quite well stylistically. It's in the selection and handling of the "villain of the week" that the authors' interests and differing approaches to the paranormal become most obvious, and the lack of clear ground rules becomes most problematic. (Then again, the viewpoint characters don't have much more understanding of what's going on than the readers.) None of that affected my enjoyment of the novels, and I'd recommend all five. Dying is a Wild Night is one of the strongest of them, and is an excellent starting point.