The Hypnotist (Reincarnationist Series #3 by M. J. Rose

The Hypnotist (Reincarnationist Series #3) by M.J. Rose
416 pages
Published May 2010 by Mira
Source: the publisher and Pump Up Your Book Promotions

Lucian Glass, a special agent with the FBI's Art Crimes Team, is haunted by the murder of his fiancee twenty years ago and obsessed with bring Malachai Samuels to justice.  Samuels is a man equally obsessed with obtaining mysterious Memory Tools which he believes will allow him to discover this past lives, something he is desperate to do before his father dies.  Farid Taghinia, an Iranian diplomat has an obsession of his own--his country wants a 4th century statue of the Greek god, Hypnos, god of sleep, returned to them and Taghinia will stop at nothing to make that happen.  The Iranian government is not alone in wanting the statue, currently in possessed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Darius Shabaz, highly successful movie director, threatens to destroy five prized paintings in an attempt to blackmail the museum into trading the statue for the paintings.

Samuels works for an organization called the Phoenix Foundation, an organization started by his great-uncle and dedicated to proving that reincarnation is real.  In order to get into the Foundation, Glass goes undercover and begins going in for therapy to help him figure out why he is waking up every morning needing to sketch faces of women his has never met but is sure he recognizes.  Although Glass tries to fight the hypnosis his therapist is using, he finds himself hypnotized and discovering that he has lived past lives directly related to the statue and the Memory Tools.

The case of the paintings being held hostage also brings Glass back into contact with the father of his murdered love, Andre Jacobs and her cousin.  It turns out that the first painting destroyed was a work that was stolen from Jacobs framing shop the night that his daughter was murdered.  Jacobs believes that his daughter's soul went into the body of his niece while she lay in a coma following a car accident that killed her family.  Seeing that painting show up again after twenty years and knowing that finding the man that destroyed it may lead to finding the killer of his love, gives Glass even more motivation to solve the case.

A lot of characters, a lot of plot lines, and a lot of shifts in setting make this story a bit of a trick to keep up with and the reader is well into the book before everything starts to come together and the pace really picks up.  I started taking notes, which helped me keep track of everything but eventually I just gave up and allowed myself to get caught up in the action. The writing is not great and the sheer number of  characters make it difficult to flesh out all of them.  But Rose does a fine job of keeping things moving even as she takes the reader from place to place and back and forth into history.

Although this is the third book in the Reincarnationist series, in reading the book I never felt like I was missing out on something by not having read the previous books.  The art aspect of this book was what drew me to it; the reincarnation theme was something I knew I would have to force myself to go along with.  I rarely read this type of book and I did have to make myself suspend disbelief but it ended up being a nice change of pace.  Thanks to Dorothy of Pump Up Your Book Promotions for offering me the chance to review this book.