RARA IBIS
Terry Sheils

 
LTDBooks, Aug 2004
Reviewed by Joy Calderwood
 
Comedy Mystery
 
Gareth and Vicki Pendragon hope their Venezuelan honeymoon will be a break from their psychic detective agency. When they are at home, their sex together makes Vicki have psychic visions, unpleasant ones. And considering how much they love sex together, her visions of crime and mayhem are a serious inconvenience. In this tropical paradise they hope there will be no evil villains to touch off the visions.
 
RARA IBIS opens with rollicking enthusiasm, as Pen and Vicki prepare for their first night in Venezuela on the beach of a deserted island. All the rules for romance writing are broken, allowing readers to enjoy a joyful, heated fulfillment in the first chapter. The catch is, Vicki's mind is taken over by a strange woman who says her name is Lorelan Barkus. The last Lorelan knew, she was on the run from someone. She is quite embarrassed to discover that she is making love with a stranger.
 
Vicki gets her body back, but Pen and Vicki have several other women called Lorelan to deal with. They also have a hotel full of nubile sirens falling over themselves – and out of their bikinis – to seduce Pen. The situation is desperate. Pen and Vicki must stop a group of gangsters who kill their beautiful young mistresses for fun and business.
 
RARA IBIS is a male reader’s (and writer’s) wish fulfillment, sexy and entertaining. Take for example the title of Chapter 1: “Which Proves that the Problems With Loving Two Women at Once are Greater When They’re Both in the Same Body”. Then there are all those other bodies, curvaceous and almost naked, making it very difficult for Pen to resist them. There is a ditzy blond who is every man’s pushover – clueless Leeza is author Terry Sheils’ indulgence in cruel humor. There is a legend about buried treasure and a carved bird necklace, and a beautiful ghost seeking revenge. With psychics Pen and Vicki telling us the story, we don’t always know what is real and what is vision.
 
RARA IBIS is the second in Terry Sheils’ Pendragon and Pendragon mystery series. Read it for light fun, titillation, and a dark touch of the gruesome. RARA IBIS is an EPPIE Award finalist for Best Mystery.
 
Dec 2004 Review

 

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