"Blends a fine amateur sleuth with a delightful romance inside a fabulous horror venue"

Chicago Park Street Players comedy club owner Grant Peterson and his manager Stephanie Cahill were having quite an affair until the night he screamed out another woman's name while suffering through a nightmare. She never explained to Grant why she dropped their romance and ultimately quit working for him. Her cousin Reggie brought her to Naples, Italy to run her comedy club there.

Grant is an avid amateur archeologist enjoying the Discovery Channel as a passion. He has come to South Italy on a dig unaware that Stephanie is nearby. As a murder occurs and a member of Stephanie's staff vanishes, she and Grant work together to try to uncover what is going on. Soon their proximity rekindles their passion, but neither knows that evil is in the air and coincidence is not what brought this couple back together.

DEAD BY DUSK is Shannon Drake at her best as she cleverly blends a fine amateur sleuth with a delightful romance inside a fabulous horror venue. The story line is action packed and filled with twists that take the reader from a broken Midwest love story to a foreign who-done-it to a second chance at love and to a confrontation with a vampire and devil dogs (these are not cake). The lead couple is a delightful pairing and the secondary cast either is old friends bringing alive Italy or malevolence at its evilest. Fans of Ms. Drake will appreciate the cleverly disguising of her subplots so that the audience never knows where she will take them next with this suspense thriller.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted December 25, 2004

Summary

For American Stephanie Cahill, Bella Vista is a new beginning—a chance to put her painful past behind her. Yet, from the moment the first body is discovered at the site of an archeological dig, Stephanie feels as if she's being watched, followed, studied...hunted.

Archeologist Grant Peterson senses something odd about this dig, something that has him locking his door at night. And now, the echoes of a burial site's ancient legend can be found in the chilling signature of a killer on the loose, as one by one, young women start disappearing, only to be found horribly mutilated.

The powerful attraction between Stephanie and Grant is a complication neither can afford as they are pulled into a desperate race against time to keep Stephanie from joining the ranks of the missing. For nothing in Bella Vista is what it seems. No one can be trusted. And those closest to Stephanie may prove the most dangerous of all.