"Colors of Rage"
by Dana Reed
Copyright ©2001
ISBN: 0-87714-672-1 eBook edition
ISBN: 0-87714-733-7 PB edition
All rights reserved by Denlinger's Publishers, including the right to reproduce this electronic book, or portions thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
THE AUTHOR
Dana Reed is the author of seven novels published by Dorchester, under their Leisure Books line: Sister Satan, Deathbringer, The Gatekeeper, Demon Within, The Summoning, Margo and Hell Board. Several of the novels have sold out and been reprinted. Hell Board has been reprinted again and is now available for sale. Two of her novels are being sold in foreign markets-- Brazil and Poland. Dana Reed is also a former investigative reporter who's written hundreds of articles and had her own column. She's a state and county certified teaching instructor, and has taught creative writing to Adult Ed students in high schools, libraries, and to students on America Online.
THE BOOK
Cassie Jo Cabot, while struggling against the questionable powers inherited from her grandmother Cassandra, discovers she's mind-linked to the same serial killer who caused her grandmother's death, also during a mind-link. However, she feels compelled to stop this deranged man no matter what the cost. The task becomes nearly impossible when she's attacked and threatened by a second killer who vows revenge over a past vendetta that Cassie Jo cannot recall.
The book is basically about one woman's quest to stop a serial killer, and to discern the identity of a second individual who seems hell bent on killing her due to some past vendetta that Cassie Jo cannot recall.
Cassie Jo Cabot is our heroine. Cassie Jo, named after her paternal and maternal grandmothers--Cassandra and Josephine--lives in a one story, Spanish style home on an island in Florida, and hates the feminine, frilly names she was given, and so readily adopts the nickname bestowed on her by her father before he died.
Believing the house she now owns to be haunted by the ghost of the late Cassandra Cabot, the grandmother she lived with for five years before her death, Cassie Jo is leery of staying there, but hesitates to move because she had nowhere else to go. She's taken great pains to change the interior of the house to rid it of the essence of evil she sensed when Cassandra was alive, getting rid of her grandmother's dark, cumbersome furnishings for light pastel colors.
One thing she cannot get rid of though is the questionable 'talent' inherited from Cassandra who taught Cassie Jo to read the auras surrounding the bodies of living creatures, a measurement of their inner personalities and feelings. When Cassie Jo conquered the ability to do this, she was frightened to note that Cassandra's aura was scarlet red, the color of Venus blood in the skull, denoting great rage, near insanity. Now that Cassandra is dead, Cassie Jo often dwells on her grandmother's gruesome and mysterious death, and finds that she fears the old woman even more.
Cassie is a computer tech who develops programs for manufacturers, and she also does oil paintings on the side to pick up extra money until she hits it big with one of her programs. She has three unfinished paintings: one of each of her grandmothers, and the third--her version of The Last Supper. Although she knows that many have been done before, Cassie Jo spent years finding subjects who matched her inner feelings about the twelve disciples and of Christ. For instance: Thomas was a man she found while visiting New York who doubted his own existence. This last painting turns out to be a key feature in the story.
To Cassie Jo's delight, the home next door to hers had been on the market for quite a while. She hates intrusive neighbors and doesn't mix well with them. Now she finds the house has been sold when the handsome stranger who bought it introduces himself as Link Gordon, a retired TV reporter for a small station in Texas. Although he's in his mid-thirties, he claims he retired from his news job to pursue other avenues of interest. Somehow Cassie Jo doesn't trust him because his auras are generally so mixed. While Link Gordon displays a peaceful personality on the outside, his aura is often a mixture of shades of red, denoting anger, unrest, raising her level of mistrust of him quite a bit. She often feels he's trying to be polite, or kind, and yet inside, he's a bubbling cauldron waiting to explode.
As it turns out, Link Gordon is really Elias Rappaport, a former cat burglar that dealt in the theft of expensive jewelry and works of art until his ten-year incarceration on death row for two murders he never committed. Rappaport had a definite purpose in coming to the island to meet Cassie Jo. He is now an industrial spy who's caught wind of her latest computer program that's worth a bundle, and he's out to steal it for the corporation that employed him when he left prison.
In the Prologue, we are introduced to Dorie Williams, a thirtyish housewife who awakens from an unconscious state to discover she's been buried alive in a wooden box. As the novel progresses, the serial killer digs her up within 24 hours and performs a ceremony during which time he kills them. Yar Gogle--the killer--is also introduced early on, and as he continually kills the same woman over and over because "the bitch just won't die" we are shown through revelations in his mind why his actions follow such a bizarre pattern. Gogle has actually killed seven women to date, but in his mind, they are the `same bitch': a woman named Norma who brutalized him and other young boys in his past.
The second killer, the one who is after Cassie Jo on a personal level, has stolen one of the serial killers knives from the Police Evidence Room and tries using it to kill Cassie Jo so that the police will believe it's the work of the serial killer. To his dismay, though, the police know he's not one and the same man since his fingerprints are missing. The police believe he burned them off with acid. And since the serial killer never left prints behind, when they see a set that are illegible, they know there are two sickos, not just one.
The two detectives for the Sheriff's Department are two individual characters involved in a mutual like/hate relationship. We have Ron Slade, the seasoned detective who knows more about these sort of crimes than his partner, Doug Morrow, who dresses like a 'druggie' down on his luck and drives Slade crazy. Morrow once worked with vice and narcotics and had to dress down to get answers when he worked the streets. However, now that he's a detective in homicide, it's no longer necessary, but old habits are hard to break.
Also featured is Diedre Roberts, a super model/movie temptress, who grew up with Cassie Jo and has remained her faithful friend ever since they were kids. Diedre's one visit to Cassie Jo proves fatal since the man who is after Cassie Jo kills her because he cannot get to Cassie Jo at the time.
Cassie Jo might actually fear the house and her grandmother's talents, but by the end of the book she realizes that everything the late Cassandra Cabot did was to keep Cassie Jo safe and to teach her lessons about people and life in general before she died. At the end, Cassie Jo uses the name Cassandra Cabot, which she nearly always loathed, with a sense of pride and dignity.
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