Trevor Black, a man who has been given the gift of seeing and fighting demons, is back in Craig Parshall’s latest novel, “The Empowered.”
After learning of an intriguing case where a lawyer is literally scared to death and dies a sudden “voodoo death,” Trevor travels to New Orleans, along with his newly acquainted daughter Heather, to look into the case after being asked to speak at a legal convention. Trevor is drawn further into the case when an assistant attorney general is also found dead … in Trevor’s hotel room … in an horrific voodoo cult manner.
Using his special ability to detect demons and “combat with the powers of hell,” Trevor and Heather seek to determine the connection between voodoo and these deaths — and incidentally get drawn into the human trafficking world, particularly the trafficking of young girls.
Will Trevor and Heather be able to connect the dots between the mysterious deaths, the disappearance of girls, and these high profile deaths? Will he be able to stop the trafficking ring? And will Trevor be able to keep both himself and Heather safe?
“The Empowered” is a wild ride featuring murders, mental institutionalization, nighttime trips deep into the heart of the Louisiana bayous, voodoo rituals, high speed chases, and depravity at the highest levels. Parshall does a great job of blending a legal thriller with a supernatural thriller, although I will say “The Empowered” is more legal than supernatural, unlike his prior novel “The Occupied” which was heavier on the supernatural side. If you blended the novels of John Grisham and Stephen King, you’d come up with “The Empowered.”
But other than being a fantastic legal/supernatural thriller, “The Empowered” offers up so many other goodies — it reminds us how easy it can be to slip into the dark side and how we therefore must be vigilant in seeking the light; Jesus won’t be crammed into a little box; we must seek and offer grace, forgiveness, and redemption; we must determine how deep our faith is; God can take the ugly and make it beautiful, and therefore He will also fix the broken parts of our lives; and we can seek the perfect power of God, which is filled with His unending love.
Parshall takes his readers on a fast-paced, high-intensity, keep-you-guessing journey with his latest novel — right down to the crazy, heart-pumping end. I certainly hope there will be more Trevor Black stories to come!
Five stars out of five.
Tyndale House Publishers provided this complimentary copy for my honest, unbiased review.
“The Empowered” (Trevor Black series, #2) by Craig Parshall