Hindsight

By Melanie Casey

AN ENGROSSING AND TERRIFYING RIDE THROUGH A SLEEPY COASTAL TOWN TORN ASUNDER BY A PREDATORY MURDERER

CASS LEHMAN HAS A TERRIFYING GIFT... SHE SEES WHAT OTHER'S CANT...

A chilling tale of a young woman cursed with supernatural powers and a grief-stricken detective who end up both an unlikely team and unwitting victims. The first novel in Melanie Casey’s paranormal crime procedural series disarms readers at every turn and interweaves contemporary small town life with references to ancient Greek classics. 

Cass has a type of retro-cognition. When she passes over the spot where someone died a violent death, she flashes back to the last few minutes of their life and experiences it as if she were them – seeing, smelling, hearing and feeling what they felt before they died. AN ENGROSSING AND TERRIFYING RIDE THROUGH A SLEEPY COASTAL TOWN TORN ASUNDER BY A PREDATORY MURDERER

CASS LEHMAN HAS A TERRIFYING GIFT... SHE SEES WHAT OTHER'S CANT...

A chilling tale of a young woman cursed with supernatural powers and a grief-stricken detective who end up both an unlikely team and unwitting victims. The first novel in Melanie Casey’s paranormal crime procedural series disarms readers at every turn and interweaves contemporary small town life with references to ancient Greek classics. 

Cass has a type of retro-cognition. When she passes over the spot where someone died a violent death, she flashes back to the last few minutes of their life and experiences it as if she were them – seeing, smelling, hearing and feeling what they felt before they died. AN ENGROSSING AND TERRIFYING RIDE THROUGH A SLEEPY COASTAL TOWN TORN ASUNDER BY A PREDATORY MURDERER

CASS LEHMAN HAS A TERRIFYING GIFT... SHE SEES WHAT OTHER'S CANT...

A chilling tale of a young woman cursed with supernatural powers and a grief-stricken detective who end up both an unlikely team and unwitting victims. The first novel in Melanie Casey’s paranormal crime procedural series disarms readers at every turn and interweaves contemporary small town life with references to ancient Greek classics. 

Cass has a type of retro-cognition. When she passes over the spot where someone died a violent death, she flashes back to the last few minutes of their life and experiences it as if she were them – seeing, smelling, hearing and feeling what they felt before they died.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pantera Press
• Release date: May 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781921997211

Melanie Casey

Melanie Casey was born and lives in South Australia with her two young children and her husband (who didn't know he was marrying a writer when he walked down the aisle). After studying English Literature and Classical Studies, Melanie shifted to Law, and now works in government. A chance meeting with a highschool English teacher in the supermarket made Melanie realise that she should be doing what she'd always loved, writing! Another period of study, this time at the Professional Writing School of Adelaide's College of the Arts ensued, helping Melanie acquire the skills she needed to put her plan into action.

Reviews for Hindsight

[carpe_librum · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Cass Lehman is a young South Australian woman in her twenties living at home with her mother and Grandmother, and completely isolated from outside life. The reason? Cass comes from a line of gifted women: her Grandmother is a hands-on healer, her mother can see glimpses of the future and Cass experiences the death of a person when she occupies the spot where they died. In other words, she has retrocognition.This paranormal gift is a curse for Cass and as a result she spends most of her time living and working from home. Cass and her family have charted all of the 'death spots' to avoid in her small home town, but she is growing increasingly frustrated with the limitations of her lifestyle.When a woman in the town is murdered, Cass decides to offer local Police her help and is introduced to Ed Dyson. I'll say no more about what happens next except to say that it's the beginning of a thriller ride.I just knew I'd love the novel as soon as I read the blurb and thankfully Hindsight lived up to my every expectation. I was instantly swallowed up by the story and immediately drawn in to Cass's world. Published by Pantera Press, this is an outstanding debut from Australian author Melanie Casey and it's exciting to see her burst onto our bookshelves in style.Hindsight is the first in a series featuring Cass and Ed, with the sequel called Craven due out in June this year. I know it's only a few months away, but it's still not quick enough for this reader. Highly recommended!

[smik_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the first novel in Casey's Cass Lehman series set in Adelaide's Fleurieu Pensinsula and Adelaide.Cass Lehman is psychic, more precisely she has the ‘gift’ of retrocognition … the ability to spontaneously re-live the last minutes of a person’s life. She has spent nearly a decade as a recluse, living quietly with her mother and grandmother, both of whom have similar gifts. Now she has decided that she should be using her gift more productively: perhaps she can be of assistance to the police in homicide cases.Ed Dyson's pregnant wife Susan disappeared without trace two years ago and since then Ed has been keeping his own case files on missing women. But it takes Cass to see a pattern that he has missed.This novel does a good job of introducing the people who will be the main characters of this series, and, while not everything is entirely plausible to me, the storyis interesting.

[shelleyraec · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Melanie Casey’s debut novel, Hindsight, has been on my wishlist since its release. It is the first book in a series to feature Cass Lehman, a woman with the psychic gift of retrocognition, and South Australian police detective, Ed Dyson.For almost a decade, Cass Lehman has lived more or less like a recluse in the home she shares with her mother and grandmother. Travel is difficult when her gift of retrocognition means that when she passes over a place where someone has died in a violent or traumatic manner, Cass experiences their final horrifying moments. Now twenty eight and tired of her self imposed exile, Cass decides it is time to confront her demons and takes a huge risk by offering her services to the local police department after a woman is found murdered in an alleyway. The lead detective on the case, Ed Dyson, is scornful until Cass makes the connection between a handful of missing person cases and murders that has eluded Dyson for years, and the pair find themselves on the trail of a serial killer.Cass’s ability is intriguing, and can be viewed as both a gift and a curse. She pays a high price for her ‘gift’, since she not only sees and hears what the victims experienced but also feels the physical pain and emotional trauma they suffered. I really like that Cass’s talent isn’t always useful, since Cass can only see what the victim saw in their last moments when the killer strikes from behind, for example, she isn’t able to offer much to a investigation.The initial partnership between Cass and Ed is not an easy one. Ed is still struggling with the unsolved disappearance of his pregnant wife two years previously and doesn’t have the patience to humour Cass given his skepticism. Cass resents Ed’s easy dismissal of her, both because she believes she can help and because she is attracted to the detective.Casey alternates between the first person perspective of Cass and third person perspectives from Ed, and the killer the pair are hunting. It’s an unusual narrative split but works well and I barely noticed the transitions. The plot is well crafted, and crucially Casey doesn’t allow the paranormal element to overwhelm the structure of a good crime novel. The pacing of the story is good with a tense, and somewhat gruesome, climatic ending that threatens the lives of both the protagonists.Combining crime fiction with an interesting paranormal element and a touch of romance, I really enjoyed reading Hindsight. I’d particularly recommend it those who find the genre mix appealing and who might have liked Charlaine Harris’s Harper Connelly series. I’m looking forward to following Hindsight up with Casey’s second book, Craven.