Body Master-C.J. Barry

Body Master
C.J. Barry
Berkley, Aug 3 2010, $14.00
ISBN: 9780425234556

Secret government agent Seneca Thomas of Extraterrestrial Criminal Enforcement Locality (XCEL), New York City Division, provides a needed innate skill as she can identify the alien shapeshifters who live amidst mankind. The aliens were stranded on earth when their spaceship crashed two years ago in the Badlands. They use homo sapiens DNA to appear as human.

Seneca’s partner Riley is killed in the line of duty while hunting for “Jack” a serial killing shifter. Wanting revenge, Seneca is outraged when XCEL leadership assigns her Max Dempsey as her new partner; Max is a dreaded shifter who offered his services to find the rogue killer. He conceals his personal agenda of killing the psychopath who murdered his wife and exposed their race to potential disaster even perhaps genocide. Worse he detests his attraction to his acrimonious human partner. Both are stunned with what they find.

In some ways mindful of Alien Nation, the opening XCEL science fiction romantic police procedural is a terrific manhunt (make that ET hunt) thriller. The story line is fast-paced with the shifters intermingled with New Yorkers coming across as genuine. With the two lead investigators forging a star-crossed relationship while going after Jack, but discovering so much more, readers will relish C.J. Barry’s entertaining tale.

Harriet Klausner