Mind Hunt: A Science Fiction/Mystery Novel

by Rebecca M. Senese

After the brutal murder of five families, Virtual Reality Officer Max Grainger races to stop the killer. Without evidence, Grainger’s virtual recreations of the murders are guesses at best and no help. When he stumbles across the dream recreations of Presidential aide Janine Sanders the similarities to the killings shock him. What’s the link between this woman’s nightmares and the murders? Will Grainger be able to find out before his own VR-inspired seizures drive him into madness? Or death?

“Mind Hunt” is a science fiction/mystery and is 122,000 words.

376 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2011

About the author

Based in Toronto, Ontario, I weave words of horror, mystery, contemporary fantasy, and science fiction. I am the author of the contemporary fantasy series, the Noel Kringle Chronicles featuring the son of Santa Claus working as a private detective in Toronto. Garnering an Honorable Mention in “The Year’s Best Science Fiction” and nominated for numerous Aurora Awards, my work has appeared in Bitter Mountain Moonlight: A Cave Creek Anthology, Promise in the Gold: A Cave Creek Anthology, Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Home for the Howlidays, Unmasked: Tales of Risk and Revelation, the Obsessions Anthology, Fiction River: Superpowers, Fiction River: Visions of the Apocalypse, Fiction River: Sparks, Fiction River: Recycled Pulp, Tesseracts 16: Parnassus Unbound, Ride the Moon, Tesseracts 15: A Case of Quite Curious Tales, TransVersions, and Storyteller, amongst others.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Max Grainger, of the Crime Investigation Unit, is investigating a series of gruesome murders. Each time, the killer slaughters the six marriage partners, then all but one child, from a family grouping. She then kidnaps the final child, dumping the body roughly a week later. We get to see the investigation from the point of view of Max. We see part of the story through the eyes of Dr. Helen Nusome, the killer. Then finally we get a peek into the life of one Janine Sanders, a presidential aide who is having nightmares of the killings. The setting takes place after a bunch of bio-plagues caused widespread sterility and genetic damage, resulting in conception occurring only by cloning, and only by the permission of a governmental body. Dr. Nusome is using the kidnapped children for genetic material to sell black market embryos, but she’s also killing and mutilating because she really likes doing so.

Things seem a bit disjointed for a while, as there’s no obvious reason despite the futuristic setting for how Janine could possibly dream someone else’s actions. There’s no evidence of any psychic abilities in the story, and she doesn’t cross the investigators’ paths until late in the tale. For the most part the characters have good complexity to them, and there’s plenty of tension to the events. Grainger is keen to catch the killers and rescue the latest kidnapped boy. This book desperately needed an extra round of editing, however. There are a lot of mis-used homonyms. Also, the use of ‘scrap’ instead of ‘scrape’ and ‘scrapping’ instead of ‘scraping’ would have felt a lot less like nails *scraping* on a chalkboard if it wasn’t one of the author’s favorite words.