Fade to Black by Heather Graham

Narrated by Luke Daniels

While Fade to Black is billed as (wait for it!) twenty-fourth in Heather Graham’s Krewe of Hunters series, there is (fortunately) no need to have read or listened to any of the others, as the novel is basically a standalone. I’ve been on a bit of a romantic suspense kick lately and the synopsis – a story of murder involving cast members of a cult TV show – sounded interesting, so I requested a review copy, hoping for a suspenseful, steamy listen with complex characters and some high-stakes action.

Sigh. You guessed it. I got pretty much the opposite. No romance to speak of – just a couple of very short, almost fade to black (see what I did there? :P) sex scenes – stereotypical characters and a plot as exciting as watching grass grow. Fortunately however, the narration by Luke Daniels was engaging enough to keep me listening, although I really wish he’d been given better material to work with.

Marnie Davante was one of the stars of a highly successful paranormal drama TV show called Dark Harbor, which has, since it ended some years earlier, acquired a cult following. It was an ensemble show featuring a family with supernatural powers, and Marnie and her former co-stars have become regulars at various fan conventions. She’s got her sights set on moving out of TV work and plans to open a children’s theatre; she’s in negotiations for a suitable space and has high hopes of her dreams soon becoming reality. But when her friend and TV “mother”, Cara Barton, is murdered in front of her at Comic Con by someone wearing the costume of a popular comic character, Marnie’s life and plans are turned upside down.

Bryan McFadden is one of three sons of parents who were both actors – who were disappointed that all three boys chose to join the military rather than follow in their footsteps. A former Marine, Bryan has just acquired his Private Investigator’s license and is also considering a move to a special FBI unit known as the Krewe of Hunters, when his mother informs him that Cara Barton, an old friend of hers, has been murdered and needs Bryan’s help. For a moment I thought I’d misheard, or that perhaps Cara wasn’t dead – but no. In a twist I wasn’t expecting (it’s not in the synopsis) I learned that both Bryan’s parents are dead, and that he can see – and talk to – Dead People. Not every single dead person, just those who have some reason to stick around – which Cara Barton does, insisting to Bryan’s mother that her friend Marnie Davante is in danger and needs help.

Which is how Bryan becomes involved in the hunt for Cara’s murderer and also somehow ends up as Marnie’s personal protection – although I had to ask myself how it was that the two detectives assigned to the case so easily accepted the involvement of a PI with no real ties to Marnie just because his parents were famous actors.

Marnie – who is Practically Perfect in Every Way – doesn’t want a bodyguard, not even one as ruggedly handsome as Bryan McFadden. She’s freaked out when Cara’s ghost appears in her house and tells her that she’s in danger – but even so, Marnie isn’t convinced. Not until a dead body turns up in her pool shortly afterwards and she starts to think that perhaps Bryan and the detectives are right, and that Cara had not been the intended target of the costumed killer. In an unsubstantiated leap of logic, Bryan surmises the dead pool guy is Cara’s killer, and that his killer is the person pulling the strings; this second murder ramps everything up, the FBI gets involved and then they team up with the local police to form a joint task force – which seemed like complete overkill to me. Oh, and some of the Hunter “Krewe” turn up as well. They’re the special FBI unit Bryan is considering joining, and its members, like him, can communicate with the dead.

My eyes hurt from all the rolling.

There’s some decent material buried among all the silliness, mostly found in the relationships between Marnie and her co-stars, especially when it comes to how they’ve all found life after Dark Harbor. Some, like Marnie, have had a decent career since the show ended, while some are barely eking out an existence on the convention circuit. These dynamics aren’t always easy, and with some of the cast pushing for a Dark Harbor revival and others not so keen, it becomes clear that there may well be some among them with a motive for wishing Marnie harm. There’s also a red-herring thrown in in the form of an obsessive fan, and while I didn’t work out the identity of the villain before the reveal, I suspect it was because I really didn’t care by that point rather than any cleverness on the part of the author – and the killer’s reasons made no sense anyway.

I hesitate to even mention the “romance” in the story, because quite honestly, there isn’t one. Marnie and Bryan have sex, yes, but they have zero chemistry, there’s no emotional connection between them and it contributes nothing to an already lacklustre story.

Luke Daniels is a hugely experienced and popular narrator with a large number of romance titles to his credit; he has received positive reviews here at AudioGals, so I thought it was about time I checked him out. I liked his performance on the whole; it’s well-paced and clearly enunciated, and he skilfully differentiates between a fairly large number of characters by using a variety of tone and accent. All the men in the story – and there are over ten with speaking roles, I think – are given distinct voices, from Bryan’s low-pitched, gravelly drawl to the brighter tones assigned to Marnie’s star-struck would-be colleague, David Neal, and the blunt, Bronx-accented tones of TV producer Vince Carlson. Mr. Daniels does a reasonable job with the female voices, differentiating mostly by timbre rather than pitch, although the differences between some male and female characters are a little tricky to hear. His portrayal of Sophie Manning, for instance, took me a while to get used to and I sometimes had to remind myself that “Detective Manning” was a woman; and while his portrayal of Marnie’s rather excitable cousin is sometimes a little over the top, it fits with the character and dialogue, so it stays the right side of ‘funny’. But speaking of over the top, the short interludes where we’re in the murderer’s PoV really are way too melodramatic – although to be fair to Mr. Daniels, they’re written that way, so perhaps he was simply interpreting the text.

Long story short, I’ll definitely be listening to Luke Daniels again, but it definitely won’t be in a book by Heather Graham.

Caz