Through Violet Eyes

Stephen Woodworth

I picked this up on a recommendation from the LiveJournal [info]booktards group, and I'm quite glad I did. Stephen Woodworth has created an alternate world that's not completely thought-out, but still intriguing, and there's not enough detail to let the tears in the fabric show though. The result may not be seamless, but it looks so, and that's really what matters.

In this world are humans known as violets, because of the color of their eyes (and whether this dig at the "violet eyes" cliché in romance novels was intentional or not, it's amusing). Violets are capable of communicating with the souls of the dead, and are therefore invaluable in the criminal justice system. The problem is that someone is killing violets, and is smart enough to never let his or her face be seen, so the victims aren't able to identify the killer any more than the police can. Enter Dan Atwater, FBI agent who's both trying to track down the killer and protect Natalie Lindstrom, a violet that the FBI believes is on the list of targets thanks to her closeness to a number of the existing victims.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that when you've got a male and female lead who are pushed together in a book that you're going to have a romantic subplot. This is one of the book's problems; Woodworth attempts early on to show Dan as being uncomfortable around violets, but never gives us enough of this aspect of Dan's personality that the reader is going to buy it. When the inevitable happens, we wonder why it's in there in the first place. (Insert much hypothesizing here about the book's underlying message about racism, which I'm sure is intended, but Dan's attitude at the beginning of the book is one of the few places it seems to be, and there's not enough detail in the book to support interpreting in that way.)

That, however, is one of the book's only problems. When Woodworth stops trying to make his characters uncomfortable, and gets them working on figuring out who the killer is, Through Violet Eyes becomes quite a fine little mystery. It's genre thriller stuff, to be sure, but it's very good genre thriller stuff. Woodworth keeps the pages turning at the proper pace, and by the time you're halfway through, you'll find yourself wanting to stay up long enough to finish just one more chapter before you go to bed. It never gets to "you find yourself still reading at six in the morning," but it's pretty close. Definitely recommended.