2 Bloggers 1 Series - The Presence (Harrison Investigations #2)

 

This month Stormi and I decided it was time to pick up another book in the Harrison Investigations series.  The first one was decent, but the male protagonist drove me crazy.  Read on to see if this one fared better and then hop over to Stormi's at Storm Reads and see what she thought.

 

TITLE: The Presence (Harrison Investigations #2)

AUTHOR: Heather Graham

PUBLISHER: Mira

PUBLISHING DATE: August 25, 2004

PAGES: 422   

SOURCE: Library

FROM GOODREADS: The ultimate moneymaking plan—buy the ancient, run-down Scottish castle and turn it into a tourist destination. Toni Fraser and her friends will put on reenactments combining fact and fiction, local history, murder and an imaginary laird named Bruce MacNiall. 

Just as someone arrives, claiming to actually be Laird MacNiall—a tall, dark, formidable Scot somehow familiar to Toni—the bodies of young women are found, dumped and forgotten in the nearby town. 

But even stranger, how is it possible this laird exists? Toni invented Bruce MacNiall for the performance…yet sinister, lifelike dreams suggest he's connected to the recent deaths. Bruce claims he wants to help catch the murderer. But even if she wants to, can Toni trust him…when her visions seem to be coming from within the very eyes of the killer himself?

MY THOUGHTS: I have to say that as much as the main male in the first book irritated me, I was worried about the character of Bruce MacNiall.  And while he may have started off kind of rocky, it wasn't long before I ended up loving him.  In fact, I liked him a lot better than the female MC, Toni, who I felt made a lot of stupid decisions and was downright bitchy at times.

Toni, her cousin and some friends from the US have rented a Scottish Castle and are doing historical reenactments for tourists.  They believe they have a legitimate contract until the owner, laird Bruce MacNiall, shows up and orders them to leave. Over the past year of so they have also been two dead women found on the woods of the property and McNiall fears allowing the Americans to stay may put them at risk. Toni and her friends convince laird MacNiall to allow them to stay while they figure out the contract scam.  To further complicate things, Toni keeps having visions of a historical laird MacNiall who allegedly killed his wife, standing at the bottom of her bed with a sword dripping blood.  

Now that I'm writing this review, it does seem like there was a lot going on in this book.  However, Graham pulls it together quite well and it was an enjoyable read.  I will say the author works extra hard to steer the reader toward the wrong perpetrator making it obvious it certainly can't be him.  However, the mystery element of the book wrapped up nicely and it was fun to see the tension between Toni and Bruce turn into something else.  Also, I will add I feel that Adam Harrison, the founder of the Krewe of Hunters, did take a long time to appear in this book and I was starting to wonder if he would show at all.

This book was definitely better than the first and I am looking forward to the third one.  Don't know when we will get to it as we have quite a few series reads going right now but the good thing about them is when we decide we want to move forward, all of the Harrison Investigation series is complete.

MY RATING: 4 PAWS