"The Calling" Don't read this book alone.

Senior citizens who are terminally ill are being killed in and around Port Dundas in Ontario, Canada.

Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is approaching retirement age at 61. Hazel is a bit cranky and has a back so painful that it takes her some moments each day to stand and stretch. She lives with her 87 year old mother, Emily, who seems to run the house and her daughter's life.

The first victim is Delia Chandler. When Hazel finds her, Delias' throat has been cut and she seems to have been bled out. Hazel is also informed that there are no defensive wounds and that Delia may have cooperated with her own death.

As the search for facts continues, Hazel's is given more investigators. One is Officer Wingate, who checks on cases of terminally ill seniors who were listed as suicides and they find that this killer may have killed as many as 16 elderly victims. Wingate believes that the killer appears to be posing as a healer, making contact with people terminally ill, perhaps promising a cure.

We follow the killer, Simon, as he goes from one victim to another and when he speaks to one of his victims, the reader learns that Simon promises not an alternative to death but insuring that their bodies are complete and be as whole as God made them when they die.

Since the victims seems to have chosen him, Hazel doesn't know how to stop the killer.

However a French Canadian Detective, Sevigny joins the team and progress is made. They follow a trail and come upon a dead body and results come from this without telling too much of the drama.

This is a tight drama that is difficult to put down. The writing is so realistic that it seems as if the reader is going through a series of police procedurals.

The writer has chosen not to give her name only using Inger Ash Wolfe as a pseudonym for this North American literary novelist.

What ever her true name is, she has done a wale of a job.

Highly recommended.