Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of One Dark Night

One Dark Night
One Dark Night
Author: Jaid Black
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Romance
Book Type: Paperback
reviewed on + 3389 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5


It doesn't get much better than serial killers and sex, does it? Jaid Black delivers a healthy helping of both in One Dark Night.

Nicole Adenike is a surgeon in a Cleveland that's lived under the predation of a sadistic serial killer for the past decade. Her friend Kim is a psychic-- well, sort of. She doesn't see things too often. But one night, she starts dreaming of the killer's next victim, and Nikki convinces Kim to go to the police. There, they meet Thomas Cavanah, romantic lead(TM). But, despite her newfound doughnut cravings, Nikki is already involved in an online relationship with a dominant middle school teacher (yes, folks, you read that right!) named Richard...

Whatever you do, do not read the back cover synopsis. For that matter, don't read most of the book's reviews. All of the above give away the big plot twist that comes around page fifty, making for pretty boring setup reading. (After all, YOU know what's gong to happen, and you keep yelling "don't go in the house!" or whatever you yell at dumb blondes in bad horror films.) While the romance angle is quite stock, and therefore predictable-- when was the last time you read a romance where the male and female leads did not eventually find themselves romantically entangled?-- Black has a good sense of what makes for a well-written genre mystery, and throws twists, turns, and red herrings aplenty into figuring out who the killer is. (If you know Roger Ebert's rules of mystery movies, you'll figure it out pretty quick, but Black does manage to invest the revelation of the killer's identity with a bit of panache.)