Tragedy enters the quaint coastal town of New Haven, Oregon when the recently released convict, Ross Conrad, vows to make good on a ten-year-old threat. Private Investigators Troy and Eva Winters take on the case when they realize their good friend, Jasmine, is the object of his delusional obsession.
When the threat becomes deadly and Jasmine turns up missing, Troy and Eva go on the hunt for Ross and his captive. The chase leads them from the Oregon coast to the dense forest of Puget Sound, Washington. Following clues and evidence of bodies left behind, Troy and Eva must find Jasmine before her time runs out.
K. J. North lives with her husband in a small town on the beautiful Oregon coast. She has been an avid reader most of her life and her idea of a perfect evening would be to curl up in front of the fireplace with a suspense thriller and a glass of cabernet. Her education includes a degree in Green Technology and Business. An entrepreneur most of her life, K. J. North has been a professional photographer and has owned and managed her own photography studio. Today she, along with her husband, own and manage a vacation rental near the beach in the small coastal town they live in. She is thrilled to welcome guests from all over the world. K. J. North is well traveled, and has been to countries throughout Europe, South America, Canada and Mexico, and has vacationed on the islands of Hawaii, Roatan, and Aruba. When not engulfed in writing her latest suspense thriller, you may find her with sand between her toes walking the wind-swept beaches on the coast of the state she loves.
Victim of a Delusional Mind, her debut psychological thriller, in the Private Investigators Troy and Eva Winters Thriller Series, is followed by Dead’s Man’s Money, Every Last Drop, Her Kill List, and No One Heard Me Scream.
The five titles in her series, Private Investigators Troy and Eva Winters Deadly Motives, are Killing Rebecca, Quiet Kill, Kill Me Twice, Killing Trail, and Sleeping with a Serial Killer. She is currently working on a new series and is excited to release the first two books in the spring of 2023.
K. J. North loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit https://kjnorth.com/ where you can find out more about her latest books, upcoming promotions, and giveaways.
I think I must have missed something in the plot...oh...there really isn't any plot, at least not a believable one. Nor are there any characters with any character. A guest in the hotel after a mere 2 days, becomes the investigators/bed and breakfast owner's best friend and they risk their lives, literally, to save her. They have more access to information (who owns what car etc.) than the police. They break into a house and the police find that it's perfectly okay. They ask a guest who is a nightclub manager to become their new chef, even though their own chef was promised her job when she came back from leave. So much of it was just a muddle of improbabilities. Okay...I know it's fiction, but shouldn't some of it be a bit realistic? Sorry, but there's not much "thriller" to this thriller.
This was not really full of surprises as we get the villain's narrative voice perspective chapters interspersed with a basic third person narrative of a young lady named Jasmine who comes to stay at Troy and Eva's idyllic bed and breakfast with fantastic views on the Oregon coast to get out of Portland for a few days. We learn that she is imperiled but also that Troy and Eva also run a Portland based private investigators agency. Toss, the villain, has just been released from prison after ten long years and he has vengeance on his mind.
This is a breezy read. It's a bit simplistic, in that the good guys are always kind, happy, efficient, thoughtful, the bad ones sociopathic to the extent that they don't plan for any consequences to their actions, which are sadistic. The procedural process of the P.I.s seemed real enough, and that coastal setting is spectacular, but the two dimensionality of the characters kept my reactions lukewarm.
This story kept me entertained for a couple of hours. It would be a lot better without all the references to people eating, drinking, getting dressed and other trivia. There was a whole sentence wasted on putting something in the dishwasher AND pressing the start button. LOL. Who would have seen that coming? But the book's not bad - just needs some pruning.
Part time in operators and private eyes agree to help a young female guest who may be a target of a recently released drug dealer. When the woman disappears they hunt for her in earnest.
This book reads like a cozy mystery. The dialogue is clunky. The good characters are icky, just to sacvharin.The villains a pre laughable. Everything just falls in place requiring zero investigative skill. Did not enjoy.
Lack of a plot,no suspense element, everything is predictable,it's sheer boredom, the scenes keep repeating and too many elements that just don't fit in .. shoddy on the whole Personally I could not read it til the end had to drop it off .waste of time
I started reading this last night and just finished as the sun is coming up. one of those don't put me down books. The great characters jump right out of the book at you and tend to seem real. A lot of twists and turns. No drawn out areas or any words just taking up space. Story starts quick continues all the way to the end the same way. No boring parts will put in to take up space this was a truly good story and I would recommend it to everyone. Actually right after my nap I'm going to start on number two in the series I hope it's just as good I hope it's better wouldn't take much to make it a five star!!!
This was a well written book. The author eased the reader into the story with a fun visit to the Oregon coast where we put and learned a little about the main characters. Then the mystery started and the author pulled the reader into the story even deeper. The storyline was not complex, but you could see the delusional mind play out in front of you.
No hideous subplots, and each hint of something to come played out well as the story progressed. I suppose we could have known more about the characters, but there was absolutely enough to tell this story.
This book is the first I ever read that was spot on perfect when it comes to grammar and spelling. Congratulations. The story is of a detective couple who also run an inn. Their new friend and employee is kidnapped. It's just my opinion but I think the female detective Eva should be a counselor or something in that area. Every time she comes upon something unpleasant she walks away.Victim of a Delusional Mind is worth reading.
The characters in this book are solid enough but the author depends too much on descriptive adjectives. Most of them are unnecessary and tend to make smooth reading clumsy and uncomfortable. She plots a good story, though, and if she can streamline her verbiage, she'll have a good thing going.
A lot of unnecessary verbiage. I think the plot wasn't fully developed. Not enough follow up information on the criminals. I would have loved it if the final thoughts of Jax and Ross were expressed. Even curious about Viggo's outcome. Too much little details to be considered dark and thrilling.
Victim of a Delusional Mind Private Investigators Troy and Eva Winters Thriller Series, Book 1
By: K. J. North Narrated by: David Scott
Tense, engrossing and entertaining!
Overall: 5 of 5 stars Performance: 5 of 5 stars Story: 5 of 5 stars Reviewed: 11-10-23
Recently released from prison and possibly psychotic, Ross Conrad is on a mission.. and that mission involves settling some scores. When someone they care about becomes endangered, private investigators Troy and Eva Winters make stopping Ross THEIR mission! Tense, engrossing and terrifyingly entertaining, “Victim of a Delusional Mind” not only held my interest, THIS nail biting, tension filled plot kept me on the edge of my seat, hoping for characters I came to care about, AND had me cheering for their ingenuity! No spoilers, I’m not giving up the goods, but you can rest assured going in that this story flows beautifully, the plot makes sense, AND all your questions be answered in due time! I loved, and really came to care about the main characters! As for the others, what a diverse variety of personalities! Some I liked, some I despised, BUT as with the main characters, all so perfectly drawn and beautifully defined that you will understand what makes them tick! The narration bringing this story to life was fantastic! Beautifully, distinctly, and emotionally voiced, it was easy to keep everyone straight, easy to follow the story, and easy to lose myself in this fantastic listen! I loved it and look forward to more! Five Stars!
This book really did have a lot of potential to be good and enjoyable... but it fell flat. The storyline was decent enough, I wanted to finish the book, but that's about it.
The characters were very two-dimensional, for starters. None of them felt real, at all. Nothing stood out, they didn't feel individualized, just very flat. Additionally, the dialogue was completely stilted. It didn't feel like a single one of the characters spoke like a real person would, not the married couple to one another, not the kidnapped woman to her captor, none of them. It didn't feel real.
The writing itself has some potential. I think with work, practice, and maybe coaching, the author could develop their writing ability. As mentioned, the dialogue needs a lot of work, but the author's ability to describe the scene was decent, if not great.
Honestly, I skimmed the last third to half the book, just to know exactly how the story ended, but it really wasn't good enough to give it more than that. The storyline had so much potential though! The married PI couple chasing a kidnapper of their newest friend, the offchamce way they found evidence from another friend's drone, I mean the potential was there, and that's why I wanted to know the end. I'd be willing to consider reading more from this author after a few years to see if they developed further, but I would not want to bother with anything written around the sand time as this book.
The cover makes this look a lot more interesting than it is, more like a procedural or a compelling look into a criminal mind. No. This is a B&B-focused cozy mystery that has a fake-feeling "private eye" career added for the B&B owners and some cheesy chapters from the villain POV (equally one dimensional). I can usually find something to enjoy in a mystery -- if the MCs are dull, maybe the plot is compelling. If the plot is lukewarm, maybe I'm tied up in what will happen to potential victims. In this book, it's all a miss. Troy and Eva are dull - when they're not doing fairly routine investigations, they're running their B&B and thinking about what to eat next. The plot is a snoozefest -- a man is released from jail and is determined to punish the witness to sent him to prison, but he's inept and there's no real puzzle to solve. Jasmine, the witness, manages to be even duller than Troy and Eva - there was no point when I was genuinely engaged in what would happen to her because we know nothing about her other than Troy and Eva find her vaguely pleasant and a good employee.
The title is puzzling too -- as the main bad guy isn't really delusional, like Troy and Eva keep insisting. He didn't want to go to jail, he went to jail, and now he wants revenge on the person who put him there before he goes back to making large amounts of money. Violent revenge isn't a positive action, but is it really delusional? He's going after the exact person who hurt him in the exact way that he said he would.
I'm not sure why this book even exists -- it seems like the author wants to set up a series with Troy and Eva, but unless you like reading detailed daily descriptions of how to run a B&B, there's really nothing here to build on.
Received an audio review copy from the narrator David Scott, this is an honest review. David Scott absolutely delivers a brilliant and bone chilling performance as he elevates this already deeply disturbing, gritty novel and takes them story to eleven. Ross Conrad lost ten years of his life to prison, all do to brave woman named Jasmine capturing evidence of his drug dealings. Now he's earning his freedom and could better his life and leave behind his past illegal activities. But they only thing that sustained Ross all that time is has deep desire to not only gets revenge upon Jasmine but that of woman named Laura, Ross's wife that.moved on to find a life that makes her happy. Driven by his obsession of personal justice, Ross achieves with the aid of his brother and a fellow illegal cohort; the abduction of both women. When a tragic twist claims Laura's life, Ross turns his abusive mindset against Jasmine, viciously taunting she'll soon be heading to her resting place. What Ross never counted upon was Jasmine's fiery determination to fight back and rick everything for even a slim shot at freedom. Her cat and mouse game provides the best of window of time for the private investigators Troy and Eva Winters to rescue Jasmine from the dense woods as a deeply troubled madman stalks his prey.
Ten years ago, Jasmine testified to send Ross Conrad to prison on drug trafficking charges. The last thing he said as he left the courtroom was that she hadn't seen the last of him. Jasmine takes a vacation to the coast, only to learn that he is now being paroled, and she fears he will make good on his threats. When she is offered a job at the bed and breakfast she's staying at, she sees a chance to begin a whole new chapter of her life, and she confides her fears about Ross to her new friends, Eva and Troy, who are also private investigators.
When Ross and his brother Jax initiate their plan for revenge, they kidnap her, and she must keep her wits about her to survive. Meanwhile, Eva and Troy are doing all they can to find their missing friend before it is too late. The tension is high, the stakes are life, as Ross always seems to stay one step ahead of the game.
Lots of potential. However, I thought I was reading book #2 or 3 because there was very little character development and it was sort of like you were just supposed to know the information. Also, way too quick development of a relationship between Troy, Eva and Jasmine that was not very credible. Finally, I don't believe the police would step back and let private investigators take the lead in a case. But story line and writing flowed smoothly. I would recommend.
Very little plot, much of the content is not very credible, very little character depth. The story was far too simplistic and predictable. Once the crime had been solved the author then spent several unnecessary chapters telling us what happened next, which was quite boring.
I would say this was a basic first draft that should have been taken to a book club for review to add more depth, some twists, some parallel plots and cut the unnecessary telling us how everything worked out well for everyone afterwards.
How can a book have so many references to getting a "cup of coffee" and a very predictable plot yet still get a ton of 5* reviews. What would "Old Man and the Sea" get for stars? Nothing against the author and congratulations to her for getting it printed. Just "rant" to the people who rate her books. Even she can't believe there are that many 'stars" awarded. I read it but I won't read another.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Victim of a Delusional Mind has everything a "detective, suspense, crime, Strong Female Protagonists reader (addict) could ask for. The best way to experience the deepest flavors of a locality is to read local writers, immerse oneself in the stories. Raw truths are often best nibbled in nuggets of fiction. I am looking forward to more. Thank you K.J. North
There are a lot of inconsistencies throughout the story. For example, in one moment Troy broke his ribs, and at the next, he was carrying a whole adult person down a hill
I think this is the first book this author has written and it's good, the concept is there but there are a lot of things missing.
I will continue to read the rest of the books because I'd like to see if there is some development in the writting.
Great story! Troy and Eva are splitting their time between their Bed & Breakfast on the coast and their PI business in Portland. When a guest at the B&B mentions that she was the key witness in putting away a drug kingpin, they don’t pay much attention to it…until the guest is kidnapped! Then Troy and Eva put their skills to work to help the police find Jasmine before a vengeful killer fulfills his mission of revenge.
I thoroughly enjoyed this tale hit kept in suspense for the entire story! No foul language or sexual innuendo! I had almost given up hope that it was possible to read a book that had good story line and no offensive undertones! thank god for dedicated people who write clean books!
She was a witness 10 years ago to a crime, she gets notified he will be released from jail. He threatened to get her but she feels safe on vacation. He finds her a the nightmare begins with her being kidnapped. Luckily a husband and wife PI’s are her friends and lead the search for her.
although it does smooth out a bit later on. I found it hard to believe the villain could be natural crazy and nobody noticed. Our heroine was amazingly in control for someone with no formal training in self defense, military, law enforcement or even a history of previous abuse.
I loved the story line of how all of the characters met up with each other. The suspense was electrifying. A total page turner I couldn’t put it down. I read it in two nights I had to find out how it would end! Like the coffee that they all drank in this thriller, it was Good to the last drop!
Although I didn't find this to be dark and disturbing as many other books I've read, it was a quick easy read. A little unbelievable that the local police would be at the beck and call of private investigators but it is fiction after all. The writing style was a little clunky and distracting at times.
This was a great read. Two brothers plan and carry out a kidnapping. Details of the victims and how the one brother was such a nut case. Had a hard time putting the book down but there are just times a person has to eat and sleep. Loved every minute of this book. Looking forward to the next story.
A well written story of PI's who also run a B&B. On first name bases with local police they are able to solve a kidnapping and other crimes. There's a side angle of another missing person who doesn't seem to add to the story but none the less quit is woven in, and doesn't harm the main plot .
I loved the narration of David Scott, he brings out the action, twist and pace
A lot of twists and turns. Ross Conrad is a recently released convict, who vows to make good on a ten-year-old threat. Jasmine, is the object of his obsession. Jasmine goes up missing, Troy and Eva go on the hunt for Ross and his captive. Troy and Eva must find Jasmine before her time runs out.
so I did enjoy this book. it took me a while to get used to the narration, but once I did then it was good. I did struggle with some of the plot devices, but the more that I have listened to this author, the more it made sense.
I really enjoyed the scenic descriptions it really took me away from everything.