CAIRNS BOOK REVIEW: Night Shift by Lilith Saintcrow (Orbit)

For fans of Saintcrow’s series about Dante Valentine, Night Shift will be greatly welcomed.

The first in a new series, the Jill Kismet novels, this is a welcome return to Saintcrow’s dark and sexy world of magic, demons, vampires and werewolves.

Jill Kismet is a Hunter, she nominally works for the cops tracking and destroying the ‘hellbreed’, demons who’ve managed to escape Hell and wreak havoc on the mortals of the her world.

A vicious killing of four cops sees Jill trying to track down a new kind of hellbreed, one that she’s never seen and whose work is the worst Jill has ever experienced.

Saintcrow’s characters are human, flawed and talented, physically strong but often emotionally damaged, and Jill is all of this and more.

The psychological depths of Jill and those around her, including her dead master, is why Saintcrow’s work stands out from the supernatural thriller crowd.

The plots are twisted, the characters are real – even the demons and werewolves – and there’s enough sex, blood and action to keep the pace thumping along.

Night Shift is a great first novel in a series that’s sure to become as popular as Dante Valentine’s or Laurel K Hamilton’s Anita Blake.

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