Woman into Wolf: A True Crime Tale

by: Alysse Aallyn

Published by: The Midnight Reader (March 15 release)

Reviewed by C. L. Rossman

When I first picked up this book, the title made me think of werewolves, and I spent a few chapters waiting for the wolves to appear. But as I got into it, I realized this was in fact a tale of mystery and murder, and a very fine psychological thriller as well.

Persephone thinks of herself as Roy’s trophy wife. He as good as worships her, yet she must tread carefully, for he has an explosive temper. She dare not show even her dog too much attention, or Roy will get rid of him, though he has never lifted a hand to her. Yet. So when she meets a criminal profiler named Ned McKick at a policeman’s birthday party, and he suggests that some unfound corpses have been buried in the woods near her property, as soon as Roy is out of the house next day, she goes cadaver diving, and fines two of them—victims of a serial killer still on the loose.

Soon she is in thick of it, and suspicions rise that her husband Roy’s evil brother Bruce may not be as dead as the family says he is. And what is the strange hold fellow policeman Jarod has over her husband? Everything Roy does is geared to winning Jarod’s approval, as if for some eerie father surrogate whose intentions are unknown.

The characters in this book are as bright as crystal and sharp as shattered glass. Aallyn not only can describe them to a neo-noun, she can make them speak true to those characters—quite a talent. Her development of her husband’s mother and the husband himself are dead-on.

So the Woman into Wolf title refers not to a mythological beast, but to a woman who must change from acted-upon to acting, who must turn predator instead of prey, in order to hunt the killer in their midst. It is based on several true events, and spun together excellently.

Alysse Aallyn began writing under her true name of Melissa Clark, but had to change it when it clashed too closely with that of a cookbook writer already in print. Her first crime novel, Find Courtney, won praise from critics everywhere. Now she is hoping readers will remember the style and accept her as her pseudonym; and she has turned out a novel every bit as worthy as her first one.

Armchair Interviews says: This is a sizzler of a murder mystery, and if you’ve been looking for this writer, here she is.