Perry knows how to write a book that will grab and hold you to the end. The Jane Whitefield series of eight books is no exception. (OK, poetic license. I’ve only read two of the series.)

Vanishing Act is the first in the series and I would suggest should be the first one to read. He spends time developing the background of the Seneca tribe and their lives in Western New York. Jane, as a Seneca, believes she is destined to “deliver” people. Specifically, people who are in serious trouble, who need to disappear, find Jane. She uses her skills to get them a new identity and a place to live.

Sometimes the job is easy and sometimes trouble forces Jane to use her other skills, the kind that keeps her alive when others are trying to kill her.

The book was released in 1995 with the last of the series in 2015. I read Dance for the Dead, the second of the series, last year but did not report on it. I have also read the first two of the three books in the Butcher’s Boy series. Read those at your peril. They are written in Perry’s intense style, but the Butcher’s Boy is a retired killer-for-hire. Needless to say, Jane Whitefield is a more commendable hero than the Boy.

Jane defends herself. She does not look for trouble. She helps people. Even so, she sometimes punishes wrong-doers in a less than charitable way.  That kind of action panders to the American obsession with winning at all costs. Did she really have to beat up the PI in chapter one? The woman was already on her way to a new life.

Perry has numerous stand-alone books, with a new one coming out next year. I look forward to reading more of his work.

Mike Lawrence