Now hear this.
If earlier glowing reviews of Emma Viskic’s two previous books featuring the deaf detective, Caleb Zelic, Resurrection Bay and And Fire Came Down, have fallen on deaf ears, now is the time to rectify this glaring omission and open your eyes to this immensely entertaining series.
The third in the trilogy, DARKNESS FOR LIGHT, has just been published and it picks up nineteen weeks after the incendiary action of AND FIRE CAME DOWN with the hearing impaired private eye committed to put the horrors and mistakes of his past far behind him.
Those horrors and mistakes have different ideas, of course, and the past becomes that foreign country where Zelic is forced to visit, a rendition of sorts, against his will, victim of the reverberations and repercussions of bygone exploits.
Zelic, profoundly deaf due to a bout of early childhood meningitis, has always harboured a fear of sinkholes, the terror of terra firma suddenly becoming unstable beneath his feet, and in DARKNESS FOR LIGHT, metaphoric sinkholes seem to open at every step.
Survivors from the previous adventures either conspire or comfort, providing succour or sucker punching to the sound reduced sleuth as he is catapulted into a conspiracy of kidnapping and killing, shakedowns and take-downs, and money laundering awash in the millions.
Friends become foes and vice versa, as revelations and recriminations strike with the sudden surprise of a snakebite, injecting the poisonous venom of suspicion and distrust. The plot is so entwined with character that any in depth review of this Medusa of mayhem is likely to summon spoilers.
Suffice it to say, Viskic nailed it from the first book, Resurrection Bay, and DARKNESS FOR LIGHT consolidates and cements her spectacular skill as a thriller writer. The thrills come thick and fast, the thrill of the case, the thrill of the chase, the thrill of the character development where the danger and distress churn the thrilling into chilling, all combined in a seriously compulsive read.
As well as pitting her protagonist, Caleb Zelic against devious, duplicitous and deadly adversaries, Viskic also illustrates his battles against the injustices and ignorance that prevail against the disabled, from the patronising to the belligerent, in encounters that range from crudely cringe making to laughable, incredulous cluelessness.
Start with DARKNESS FOR LIGHT and then flashback to the previous capers, or begin at the beginning with Resurrection Bay to take in the grand chronological sweep of this spectacular saga. Either way, you’ll be hooked.
Emma Viskic’s Caleb Zelic thrillers are published by Echo.