I have many of Rachel Lee’s old Silhouette romances, but haven’t read any of her recent work and had no idea what I was getting into with Something Deadly. Although it’s technically categorized as romantic suspense, this is a spine-chilling, page-turning ghost story that I read in one sitting.

The tropical island of San Martin is like Disneyland for adults. The weather is beautiful, the community great, the island recreation wonderful, etc. Veterinarian Markie Cross loves her job. She is salaried, so she can treat all the animals on the island, regardless of whether the owners can pay. This gives her emotional satisfaction because she does not have to put animals to sleep when an owner is unable to pay for surgery or expensive on-going care. She and her wolf/husky mix, Kato, have made friends on the island and enjoy life there immensely – until the first strange death occurs. Kato drags Markie to the scene of the crime and refuses to budge until he is ready.

At the death scene Markie becomes better acquainted with the island doctor, Declan Quinn, since Kato refuses to leave for some unknown reason. Declan finds strange circumstances surrounding the scene (other than Kato’s behavior), and is later horrified to discover something completely unknown during the autopsy. All of the bones and organs of the victim have completely disintegrated. The island is quarantined and the CDC called in.

Ah, if it was only a mere case of an unknown, infectious disease. The island of San Martin has a bloody history involving a very evil woman by the name of Annie Black. She was a murderer who enjoyed terrorizing and killing people. She was finally killed herself by the slaves of the island whom she brutalized, and her ashes were spread over the island so she could never return to physical form. In the words of the island’s current Creole shaman/medicine woman, “Annie wadde be gran bad wam, Annie was a very bad woman.” Was she ever.

It seems that people who should have known better were dabbling with forces they had no control over and didn’t fully understood. All the island dogs sense something is wrong, Kato in particular. They bark, whine and exhibit strange behavior during the nights when evil is afoot. Dec and Markie slowly piece together the evidence from the continuing horrible deaths and the dogs. Markie has her own sixth sense that allows her to feel when evil is near. Dec has problems believing in what is actually causing the deaths of the islanders, but when nothing else makes sense, he is forced to conclude something supernatural is happening on the island. At the heart of this book are issues of faith and belief in the battle of good versus evil, which is at also at the crux of Dec’s character.

I usually stay far away from ghost stories since I tend to scare easily – a holdover from reading too many Koontz and King novels in my younger days. The race to find the evil on the island, the dogs’ sense of the extraordinary, the way the human characters absorbed the evil, it all gave me goose bumps in its delivery.

A warning to those who dislike head hopping: this book had it in spades. The reader experiences viewpoints from the perspectives not only of the main characters but also of Annie, the villains, and the dogs – in short, every possible view point that can be expressed is given an outlet. Perhaps this is why it was so creepy for me. I really didn’t want to know what the villains were thinking, since the underlying evil was truly awful, and Annie’s back story was hideous. My other issue was due to the nature of the plot. Dec and Markie are literally racing to save themselves and others on the island from something very scary and evil. This doesn’t equal romance for me, and in fact, there was very little of that. More attention was given to twisted and ugly sex scenes involving the villains. Not my idea of romantic suspense, no sir.

One note about the sensuality rating. There’s almost no lovemaking between Dec and Markie; as I’ve said, they were too busy fighting evil for this side of their relationship to be developed. However, we do witness some skanky sex between some of the villains. Because of the actions described in those scenes, I gave this book a “warm” rating – but they didn’t strike me as sexy. They got more of an “ugh” reaction out of me.

Still, I literally could not put this book down until I finished it, so that says something about the compelling nature of the story. Of course, then I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. If you like a good spine-tingling ghost story and aren’t too concerned about romantic elements, Something Deadly one will fit the bill nicely.