Feeding the Demons by Gabrielle Lord

Publisher's Synopsis

Gemma and Kit are two daughters of a father convicted of their mother's murder. The women have differing opinions about the guilt of their father, and his release from jail causes conflict between them, while at the same time a series of gruesome events involving slashed women's clothing escalates into serial murders.

What have these events to do with Gemma and Kit's past secrets? And what of their father?

This book is a great read - absorbing, intriguing and teasing the reader. It will please Lord fans but is also a great one to start with for crime readers who have not yet been introduced to the talents of Sydney-born Lord.

My Review 

It seems that Australia, and Sydney in particular, is well served by female private investigators. At least fictionally, that is. For 4 terrific books Marele Day's hard-nosed Claudia Valentine covered Sydney like a rash solving case after case while guiding the reader through the Sydney streets. Now, introduced in  and covering the territory left over Claudia Valentine is an equally steely woman named Gemma Lincoln. 

Gemma is an ex-cop turned private investigator running her own agency in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. She employs a couple of experienced operatives and for the most part caters to the insurance companies who employ her company to investigate frauds. But Gemma also has a tendency to take on much more dangerous cases which makes  gripping reading.

For some reason, Gemma Lincoln lives her life flirting with danger, almost willing fate to step in and punish her. This is demonstrated at the opening of the book when she wakes up alone in a motel bedroom after picking up a guy the night before in a Sydney nightclub, just one night in a regular series of destructive impulses she gives in to. On the floor of the motel she is chilled to discover her clothes laid out in an effigy of a woman, slashed and stained at the throat and crotch. It's not until later that she finds out how lucky she was to have slept through the visit by her unwelcome guest when similarly laid out clothes are found next to the body of a woman.

On top of the drama supplied by the unknown killer, Gemma's sister Kit is having a few problems of her own. She's a psychotherapist who has had problems in the past with obsessive patients and has since become very wary of them. Despite all of her defences against the possibility of another attack, a new patient she has started treating has set her alarm bells ringing. Just how dangerous he is and what affect he will have on the main storyline is kept tantalizingly hidden for most of the book.

For the most part this is a tense psychological thriller as Gemma assists the police in capturing the murderer before he kills again. But there is a lot more to Gemma Lincoln than simply her job as a private investigator and Gabrielle Lord does an excellent job of providing us with her back story, bringing her to life and ensuring that we care about what happens to her. 

A particularly endearing point regarding Gemma Lincoln is that, while she is a strong and capable woman, she is also not without flaws, a fact she is well aware of. But rather than obsess over them, she takes the attitude that she is who she is, good, bad or indifferent.

The trauma she has suffered as a young girl becomes integral to the story with her father about to be released from prison after a 30 year sentence. The emotional effect that his impending release has on both Gemma and Kit places a huge strain on both sisters, dominating their attention and their emotions. At times, this sub-plot provided some very moving scenes that turn out to be not irrelevant to the main storyline, a tie-in that I found very effective.

One thing is certain: when reading Feeding the Demons, you won't have a chance to become bored with many different sub-plots taking place. Gabrielle Lord manages these storyline threads well too, ensuring that the plot remains uncomplicated yet interesting. A lot of detail is devoted to Gemma and Kit's early life, particularly the hardships they went through after their father was gaoled. Both women become very sympathetic characters thanks to this detail.