In Darkness Dwells

Title: In Darkness Dwells
Author: Nicole Wilkinson
Cover artist: N/A
Publisher: Torquere Press
Amazon: Buy Link In Darkness Dwells
Genre: Gay Mystery/Paranormal
Length: 377 pages/106,000 words
Rating: 4.25 out of 5

A guest review by Sirius

Summary: Interesting mystery with a paranormal element which was an enjoyable read for me, once I was able to suspend my disbelief as to the initial set up.

Blurb:

American PI Elias Grimm has just accepted the case of a lifetime: billionaire Baron McPherson’s son has died, and his father is sure it’s murder. McPherson’s offer is worth enough that Elias can finally get Uncle Sam and his ex-wife off his back. Elias travels to Japan, where he finds ancient grudges, the mystical power of a deity, and the equally mysterious Madison Suou, who might hold all the answers Elias needs.

Elias soon learns that the billionaire’s son was only one of many victims, and he knows he’s ill-equipped to handle a serial killer. Especially one who kills in a manner that can’t be explained by modern medicine or science. But the money’s too good to back out, and so is Madison.

Review:

I am not sure about you, but an American billionaire who wants to investigate the death of his son, which happened in Japan, and who chooses for that matter a PI he never heard of before, moreover a PI who never *investigated a murder* before, makes me doubt that he has a lot of grey matter left in his head. Would it not be more reasonable to choose somebody who actually lived in *Japan* all their life? While Elias has some Japanese heritage, this was a tough hurdle for me to overcome and to suspend my disbelief. However, however once I managed to talk myself into going with the flow and pretend that yeah, Elias Grimm just could be the most appropriate candidate to investigate such a murder, I actually really enjoyed the most of the book.

In Darkness Dwells has a pretty strong paranormal element. At first I was not convinced, because while I love paranormal stories that take place in a world where paranormal activity or creatures are the part of it, this story takes place in “our” world. It usually takes a lot for me to believe that a paranormal element does belong in our world, but by the end of the story I thought that it felt as an organic part of our world and I enjoyed that a lot. I also found it to be quite dark if only because of how many people died due to what happened.

We get to know Elias really well since he narrates the story and the author actually made me sympathize with him and relate to him right from the beginning. Elias, as so many protagonists in m/m romance, had a somewhat painful childhood (although far from being the most painful, thank goodness) and a broken marriage, but at essence I thought him to be a decent man, who accepted himself being gay without too much angst. Elias keeps telling the readers that greed is what kept him going to investigate this murder — and then multiple murders — but we also can see that he does want to find answers for the victims and their relatives, and ultimately that drives him as much as, if not more than, the money.

Madison was a very interesting character who may be hard for some readers to like, but I thought of him first and foremost as a desperate man, and I at least pitied him a lot. I would not call the relationship he and Elias have during the course of the book a romance, but I certainly believed that they have a future together. I believed also that they developed strong feelings for each other while the events of the mystery were unravelling.

Recommended.