Witches Hammer Author:Jane Stanton Hitchcock A respected surgeon and rare book collector is brutally murdered in his elegant Manhattan home, just hours after showing a book dealer the fifteenth-century manual of black magic—a grimoire—he'd received from a grateful patient. Now the healer's blood is everywhere—and only the priceless grimoire is missing. The horrific death of her bel... more »oved father has shattered Beatrice O'Connell's quiet, sane, and orderly world. Only by tracking down the vanished malevolent tome—with its dark spell and salacious illustrations—can she hope to put things right. But the search is leading Beatrice, her ex-husband, and a mysterious occultist into an expanding labyrinth of powerful evils, a tangled web that reaches as far as the Vatican itself. What coveted secrets are hidden in the missing volume that threaten to turn Beatrice into precisely what her unseen and unrelenting enemies are determined to destroy?« less
I didn't really care for this. I found it overwrought. The dialogue was poorly written and I didn't warm up to any of the characters. I especially disliked the main character, Beatrice. The premise was interesting, the execution? Not so much.