A Rush of Wings by Adrian Phoenix
ISBN: 9781416593652
Book 1 of The Maker’s Song
Heather Wallace is an FBI profiler working in the field(??) on a serial killer case (all alone, loose-cannon like). In New Orleans the killer leaves its latest victim on the doorstep of Club Hell (a goth/punk club located at street number 666) with a message in blood that seems directly aimed at Club Hell’s popular (in an underground/punk/sexual deviant way) lead attraction, the (mysterious, tortured, and possibly a vampire) Dante PreJean (seriously). Heather can’t help falling for the mysterious (and seemingly sickly, but oh so sexy) PreJean and decides to go against the local cops (as in disagree with them) to prove his innocence and keep him from falling prey to the brutal serial killer.
A Rush is Wings is heavily cliched, overly-dramatic and so gothic I’m surprised it wasn’t printed on black paper with red words. As a mystery/police procedural it makes my head hurt. Heather is not a field agent, but she’s operating alone, ignoring things like evidence and jurisdiction and common sense. She doesn’t hesitate to give rides to PreJean, who is the primary suspect in the murder cases she’s apparently investigating. She also hangs out at his house and drinks with him while the local cops are trying to finger him as the serial killer (and of course, eventually she sleeps with him). She has such dangerously poor control of her weapon that she doesn’t notice when the magazine is stolen from the gun (which is in her purse). Meanwhile the mysterious man they find outside a crime scene, a reporter who somehow always has pictures of the crime scenes before the cops ever get there and is actively trying to make the cops out to be fools (and who, of course is the killer, and no this isn’t a spoiler because it’s revealed all of 100 pages into this nearly 500 page book) is dismissed outright and escapes to create more havoc. These are only the biggest (and they are pretty big) mistakes in only the first third of the book.
However, A Rush of Wings comes in at an even three stars because there is something almost hypnotic about Phoenix’s writing style and despite how many times I was thrown out of the book to engage in eye rolling or assessments on WTF it was easy to keep reading (and I could almost forget about the mistakes for a little bit until another one happened). It reads like some of the better Ann Rice or Poppy Z. Brite fan fiction, that is not original, but containing a familiar charm. I really don’t recommend it, but I have no doubt that there is an audience just salivating for books like these (with a dark, sexy, rock-god vampire hero, a pretty, strong, determined heroine, gothic intrigue and serial killers).