Blog Tour Review: Let Us Prey – Jamie Lee Scott

Let Us Prey by Jamie Lee Scott
Series:  Gotcha Detective Agency #1
Release Date:  July 4, 2011
Publisher:  Ryan Lee Inc
Page Count:  271
Source:  Bewitching Book Tours
Buy the book at: Amazon 

Mimi Capurro, owner of Gotcha Detective Agency, has been hired to protect New York Times bestselling author, Lauren Silke, who was recently assaulted in the bathroom at a paranormal conference. Though Mimi is hired to act as bodyguard for Lauren’s upcoming book tour, plans change when Lauren’s assistant is murdered and the slaying is a replica of a scene from Lauren’s newest novel. A novel that hit bookstores the same day as the killing.
Now instead of playing bodyguard, Mimi is cracking computer code, and chasing down vampires. These vampires come alive on the streets of Santa Cruz, as part of a live-role-playing game. Mimi must find the connection between the vampires and the author to track down the killer. This would be much easier if Detective Nick Christianson wanted her investigating the case.

Nick, Mimi’s old college fling, is the lead homicide investigator.
Though he wants her off the case, he also wants to pump her for information. Nick may have used her in the past, but this time she’ll use him to try to catch the murderer first.

I enjoyed this first installment in the Gotcha Detective Agency series.  The characters were engaging and often times entertaining, while the whodunit storyline kept stringing you along to other conclusions.  Now, I will admit, I had my initial guess about who the killer was (turned out I was right) but I ended up changing my mind several times because the author did such a great job of casting doubt on all the players.

Mimi was the kind of character that I like.  She’s strong and has no problem standing up to people, but all of that covers a vulnerability she doesn’t like to show.  We saw her cover that vulnerability a couple times (some more successfully than others) but that made her more likable, in my book.

Mimi employees a cast of characters I can only hope we’ll get to see more of in future entries into the series.  Charles was my favorite as the gay technie guy who doesn’t really appear to be gay yet dresses like he is.  His bantering with Mimi (and Nick in some cases) was comedic and often times broke the ice during a tense situation.

The only character I didn’t really like was Nick.   I wasn’t sure if he was written specifically that way…to throw readers off, but to me he had “dick” tattooed across his forehead.  There were many times I had to wonder why Mimi was even having to fight an attraction to him because the minute he started barking orders and being condescending to me would have iced over my libido for good.

An excellent start to the series and one I look forward to reading more of.