THE MESSENGER

It seems our protagonist, Tyler Hawthorne, should have died on the battlefield of Waterloo some 200 years ago. Luckily Adrian deville, Lord Varre, shows up to save his life with one catch. Tyler must hear final thoughts of terminal people and convey the messages to the loved ones. He is also given a cemetery dog, Shade, to protect him along with a ring that seems to heal any of his injuries immediately. Why Lord Varre would loan Tyler the ring just so he could age a bit is unclear.

This is the first novel I have read by Jan Burke, and I enjoyed it. However I did think the tale about the mysterious ring and Lord Varre a tad nebulous. I think Jan Burke could have given the reader a little more background on how the ring and its powers evolved.

The story starts off with Eduardo Leblanc, a salvage diver, finding a small locked chest below the Caribbean sea. The chest apparently holds the ashes of our antagonist, Lord Varre! How did he survive 200 years without the powers of the ring? It seems Lord Varre wants his ring back and uses Eduardo and others to locate Tyler Hawthorne. While his servants are locating Tyler, Lord Varre is being resurrected by millions of disgusting bugs! Jan Burke doesn't explain to the reader how this is done. The lack of clarification throughout the novel is the weak part of Burkes' writing.

When Tyler meets a haunted Amanda Clarke and her friend Ron, the story is off and running. I'm not going to give away any more details, but the story starts to get interesting after this occurs. To Jan Burkes' credit, the rest of the novel takes off as a real page turner. The ending was well constructed and conceived. I prefer a novel to be about 500 pages, so I was a little disappointed with the 305 of this book.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Since I haven't read any of Jan Burkes' Irene Kelly series, I shouldn't be so critical, but it is how I judge it. For Burke fans, she has a new Irene Kelly book coming out 6/21/2011 called Disturbance: An Irene Kelly Novel.