When Death Draws Near {Litfuse}

 

 

About the book When Death Draws Near:

When Death Draws Near (Thomas Nelson, August 2016)

Death has always been part of Gwen Marcey’s job. But when faced with her own mortality, everything takes on a different hue.

Forensic artist Gwen Marcey is between jobs and homes when she accepts temporary work in Pikeville, Kentucky. The Eastern Kentucky town, located deep in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, has been plagued by a serial rapist and a series of unexplained deaths. Before Gwen can develop a composite drawing, the latest witness vanishes, just like all the previous victims.

Turning her attention to sketching the face of an unidentified body, she discovers a link between hisdeath and a Pentecostal serpent-handling church. Serpent-handling is illegal in Kentucky, and the churches have gone underground to avoid the authorities and continue to worship as they believe. Gwen is offered a handsome reward to infiltrate the renegade members, a reward she desperately needs as it seems her breast cancer has returned.

Joined by her digitally-obsessed, Generation Z daughter, Gwen goes undercover to a nineteenth century revival, planning to draw the faces of the snake handlers so they can be identified and arrested. Instead she uncovers a murderous plot and a festering evil.

Carrie Stuart Parks is a Christy finalist as well as a Carol award-winning author. She has won numerous awards for her fine art as well. An internationally known forensic artist, she travels with her husband, Rick, across the US and Canada teaching courses in forensic art to law enforcement professionals. The author/illustrator of numerous books on drawing and painting, Carrie continues to create dramatic watercolors from her studio in the mountains of Idaho.

 

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I really enjoyed this book.  I wasn’t sure at first.  Forensics is something I love and reading about medical and mysteries always has me hooked.  But, the snakes.  Y’all, I don’t like snakes.  No ifs, ands, or buts about it.  Those poisonous snakes give me the shivers even just reading about them.  I’m lucky my husband was home the night I read this book or I might have been checking my bed for rattle snakes.  Yikes!  

 

That makes you know it’s a great book though.  When the book world and your reality tend to melt together and you’re not sure if you are you any longer or if you’ve become the main character.  This is one of those books.  I was in the book.  My life was her life and boy did I not like all those snakes.