Review: Another ancient secret society makes mischief
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 10, 2013
"Blood Brothers" follows the trend of releasing a short story digitally to promote an upcoming series novel, generating buzz and a little extra income for the author and publisher. The story is generally followed by the novel's opening chapter. "Blood Brothers" is part of the Order of the Sanguines series, which began withThe Blood Gospel. It promotes the second book in the series,Innocent Blood. Most of the promotional stories I've read have been unexceptional and that's how I would characterize Blood Brothers.Arthur Crane finds an orchid in his apartment and flashes back to 1968 when, as a reporter in Great Britain who traveled to San Francisco to write about the death of a British folksinger, he saw a poster bearing the picture of Christian, a relative who was almost like a brother as Arthur was growing up. He didn't find Christian that day, but he did learn that the folksinger's killer left an orchid on his body. A pattern soon developed -- the victim receives an orchid in the morning and is killed twelve hours later, another orchid left on the body -- leading Arthur to dub the murderer The Orchid Killer. Arthur knew things weren't going well for him when he found an orchid on his typewriter. The story moves on from there until Arthur returns to the present and his second orchid.Some aspects of "Blood Brother" are unoriginal, including the inevitable "secret order buried deep within the Catholic Church," and Rollins/Cantrell are not subtle in their character development. Still, the story moves quickly, the setting is described in convincing detail, and action scenes are more plausible than is common in thrillers (at least if you discount the fang-like teeth that both good guys and bad guys are sporting). I liked "Blood Brothers" enough to give it a weak four stars but not enough to convince me that the world needs another series of books about an ancient secret society.