The focus of my blog is to review book series and not individual novels. But writers are going to continue writing novels within a series even after I have done my review, so I plan on reviewing the individual novels as they come into circulation.   Iris Johansen has just recently added book #20, Night and Day, to the Eve Duncan series and the third book within a trilogy. This review does contain some spoilers for the previous two books in the trilogy, Shadow Play and Hide Away.

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Night and Day is the finality of Iris Johansen’s latest trilogy within the Eve Duncan series which revolves around eleven year old Cara Castino. The trilogy began with the novel Shadow Play for which Eve Duncan received a skull of a young child from a sheriff in California to reconstruct. The reconstruction turned out to be Jenny Castino, the daughter of a Mexican drug lord and sister to Cara.  It turns out that Cara and Jenny were on the run with the help of their caretaker, to escape from her family and life within the drug cartel. Jenny’s demise, it turns out, was committed by one of her father’s henchman. With the revelation of Jenny’s identification through the reconstruction, Eve Duncan, along with Sheriff John Nalchek, begin to hunt for Jenny’s murderer and come across Cara. Duncan’s maternal instinct kicked in and decided to take Cara under her wing. This leads to the second novel in the trilogy, Hide Away.

In Hide Away, it appeared that Jenny’s murder was actually orchestrated by her dear mother, Natalie Castino, a highly manipulative and evil creature to say the least. So to protect Cara, Eve Duncan flees to Scotland to join Duncan’s adoptive daughter, Jane McGuire, to help her find Cira’s treasure (read Countdown for more background on what this is all about).  But the fortification of Loch Gaelkar is not enough to keep out Natalie Castino and her merry band of lackeys from descending on the treasure hunters with guns a blazing to abduct Cara and whisk her off to Natalie’s homeland of Russia, which now leads us to the present novel, Night and Day.

Eve Duncan is not about to let Natalie Castino get away with taking Cara, so along with her her FBI/navy seal/cop husband Joe Quinn, quasi-vampire like Seth Caleb, and assassin extraordinaire Jock Gavin, Duncan and her cohorts take on Natalie with a vengeance to bring back Cara. Of course, in the middle of all this excitement Eve Duncan is with child, which puts a damper on how much Eve can handle when taking on the bad guys. Duncan’s delicate condition also makes her vulnerable to the maleficent Natalie Castino, who is more than happy to take advantage of the situation.

The Eve Duncan series is a series that I hate to love, but yes I do admit, I love it. The series started as a normal crime thriller, but over time has become more fantastical with each successive novel. Interestingly enough it is why I love this series. Ghosts, pseudo-vampires, telepathy, and a character that is a female version of Dr. Dolittle is what keeps bringing me back time and time again. I am intrigued to find out how Eve Duncan’s newborn will turn out, as there are plenty of hints to indicate that this child is ‘special’.  Alien from another planet? The second son of God? I guess I will just have to tune in to the next addition to the series to find out. Nonetheless, Night and Day is a fun distraction and a must read for the Eve Duncan fan.

I would suggest reading Countdown, Shadow Play, Hide Away, and Silencing Eve before reading Night and Day.

I would like to thank NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for my Advance Reader Copy of Night and Day.

To learn more about the series check out Iris Johansen’s Eve Duncan series.