- Dead by Midnight by Beverly Barton
Book Review for Dead by Midnight: 2 Treasure Boxes
Dead by Trilogy #1
Griffin Powell #11
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listening Length: 15 hours and 34 minutes (384 pages), ASIN: B005HBKTG2
The actors that once starred in a porno movie are systematically being murdered in Dead by Midnight. Lorie, one of the actors, has for the past nine years regretted making this movie. Since returning home, she has been living a good life, despite her childhood sweetheart who is unable to forgive her past mistakes. But now that her life is threatened, her ex-finance, who is also the sheriff, is determined to see she remains safe, despite his feelings.
Beverly Barton, who past away April 2011, wrote over 80 novels in both the romance and suspense genres and a number of series including: The Protectors, Griffin Powell / The Powell Agency, and The Cherokee Pointe Trilogy. Dead by Midnight is a Griffin Powell novel and it is also the first book in the Dead by Trilogy. This book is a thriller, suspense and romance. There are also several graphic sex scenes. The story is told in a third person narrative from the point of view of several different characters, including the murderer, but primarily from that of the main protagonist, Lorie.
Initially, there were a lot of different characters and it took me a while to get everyone straight, but once I did I really started to enjoy the story. This book revolves around the porno industry, and it shows how porno can hurt people and families. It is good to bring some attention to the porno industry because in our current environment 12% of websites are pornographic and 25% of all internet searches revolve around porn.1 I thought the story helped to bring some awareness to this without becoming preachy.
There were several layers to this story, with numerous killers or would be killers running around. A couple of the storylines came to a full conclusion, but the one surrounding The Powell Agency did not. The story was told fairly well, and kept the identity of the murderer pretty well hidden until the end. Enough clues were released to enable me to guess who it was before the reveal, and I liked that a couple of red herrings were thrown in as well, so it was not completely transparent. The Griffin Powell Agency played a minor role throughout the story, but I have a feeling the next book is going to be centered more on the people from this group.
This is the first Griffin Powell novel that I have read, even though it is the 11th book in this series, and yet I did not feel like I was in the middle of a series. The main story line can stand on its own, and came to a good conclusion, but the secondary story line did not. Since this is the first of the Dead by Trilogy, I probably will read the next book, Dead by Morning. I have not read the previous 10 books in the Griffin Powell series and probably won’t. I recommend this book as a good read, especially if you enjoy a suspenseful romance that includes some hot sex scenes.
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1 http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/stats-on-internet-pornography/