Heaven's Witness
The serial killer known as the "Messenger" in Telushkin and Estrin's solid paranormal thriller has a particularly evil trademark: after abducting a young woman, he calls her parents to give them a message, a painful notification that their daughter is dead. But it's a message from beyond the grave that transforms the brilliant young psychiatrist Dr. Jordan Geller into an amateur sleuth. When Geller hypnotizes Robin Norris, a young actress struggling with her voice, he encounters the spirit of one of the Messenger's victims, Beverly Casper, who died in 1970, years before Norris was born. As an analyst-in-training at Los Angeles's elite Dittmyer Institute, Geller is no New Age flake; after some research reveals that Casper was real (and really murdered), he starts to believe in Norris and reincarnation. The psychiatrist proves to be seriously naïve as a detective, and when he goes to the police with the story, Geller himself becomes a suspect, one of a series of events that turns his monkish life upside down. Detailed backstories, plus numerous psychoanalytical and New Age tidbits, slow the plot in places, but the past-life angle sustains interest.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.