Crime Seen (Psychic Eye Mysteries, Book 5) by Victoria Laurie

Book five of this series starts a few months after the last book ends. Abby is still living with Dutch and she is on the way to recovery. Dutch is concerned because he thinks she is well enough to start working again, but Abby has lost her confidence and isn't really sure about the whole psychic thing anymore. She feels her intuition should have kept her from getting shot in the first place, and if it could fail so miserably for her, how can she trust it where other people are concerned.

Meanwhile her friend Candice (the PI from Kalamazoo) moves to town to open her own business, and she rents out the empty space in Abby's business office.

Dutch asks Abby for help on a few of his cases, and when she's closing her eyes and grabbing files she accidentally grabs a different one. A case that is closed, with someone already in jail, and Dutch and Milo put him there. And she sees that the man serving time didn't actually do it. The problem is that this is a hot button issue with Dutch and Milo, so she's got to secretly investigate it without them knowing what she's up to. She enlists the help of her friend Candice, and for once we see the girls handling themselves without having to get help from the guys. Nice.

And, Abby and Dutch (mostly) act much more mature with their relationship in this book. A very refreshing change.

I also like that we see Abby having to fight to get her life back as she recovers from the bullet wound. She has to fight to get her body back in shape and fight to get her emotions back in order. And there is that place in the relationship where it's time for Dutch to stop sheltering and protecting and start treating her normally again, and even that is handled well in this book. In real life we aren't just magically okay again after that kind of trauma, and I'm glad that we got to see Abby having to work through this in order to be herself again.

I didn't figure out the "who-dun-it" aspect of the mystery until everything was explained near the end, and I appreciated the twists and turns we were put through while our girls figured out what happened. One thing I wasn't so happy with: Even though I liked the ending, I think that Abby and Candice took too big of a risk handling things the way they did. As much as I enjoyed them handling things through much of the book without needing Milo and Dutch as backup, I think they should have waited for backup for the grand finale. It was fine the way it happened, but may have been a little more believable if they'd have had a Plan B in case Plan A didn't work out.

This book gets an 8 out of 10, and I'm moving the series rating up to that as well.


Book Rating 8 of 10
Series Rating 8 of 10






1. Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye
2. Better Read Than Dead
3. A Vision of Murder
4. Killer Insight
5. Crime Seen
6. Death Perception
7. Doom with a View