In Dead Before Dying, Kerry Schafer introduces middle-aged, female FBI paranormal investigator Maureen Keslyn. This engaging first entry in a new series also features a mysterious home for the elderly that is full of secrets, an honorable-seeming small-town sheriff, and a sense of the supernatural that's thoroughly grounded in the mundane.
Maureen receives a cryptic summons from a former partner whom she hasn't heard from in more than a decade. He's asked her to come to Shadow Valley Manor, a nursing home for the well-off. Maureen, fresh out of the hospital following a battle with a supernatural beast, grudgingly visits the home, where she finds a hostile woman in charge, secret passages to a basement filled with old lab equipment, and an invisible presence that seems to thrive on blood.
With the help of teenaged mortuary assistant Sophronia, recently hired kitchen staffer Matt and the aging yet still tough-as-nails Sheriff Jake Callahan, Maureen must find out what evil Shadow Valley hides in its basement, especially as the aged residents begin dying one after another.
There's a familiar and well-developed texture to Dead Before Dying; Schafer has crafted a dynamic world that fully immerses its readers--the characters are fascinating and the twisted plot moves swiftly, with vampires, soul suckers and ancient goddesses building upon each new revelation as events approach the satisfying conclusion. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor