‘Blind Sight’ doesn’t rely on a gimmick

  Crime-fighters with special, other-worldly skills seem to be a theme this year — at least for me — and here is
yet another.
  Terri Persons’ third novel focuses on protagonist Bernadette Saint Clare’s special gift, the ability to hold in her hands something that had been touched by a killer and then to see through the killer’s eyes, sometimes in real time, sometimes not. That Bernadette is an FBI agent is particularly convenient; this is no doubt a job skill that lots of agents would love to possess. While accepting Bernadette’s ability requires a certain suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader, it helps that she keeps it a closely held secret, secure in the knowledge that most of her fellow agents and members of the public would be extremely skeptical if they were aware of her extraordinary  crime-fighting methods.
  The book, which centers around the murder of the pregnant teenage daughter of a U.S. senator, also involves witches and covens and paganism, but Persons is careful to make the characters offbeat and all too human, even self-conscious about what many seem to think of as silly ceremonial rites.
  While “Blind Sight” is the third in a series, it’s a loosely connected series. I was well into the book before I remembered that I had read “Blind Rage” last year. (You may think I’d have more easily remembered the thing about the agent looking through the killer’s eyes, but like I said, there seems to be a lot of that going around these days.) That’s testimony to the fact that Persons relies more on developing the story and solving the crime and doesn’t let Bernadette’s unique gift be an easy out for resolving sticky plot points.