Sylvie Lightner is running down a fairly typical missing person's case when she finds her client's wife alongside four more women of similar physical features beneath the waters of a Florida swamp. Although Sylvie is known for her independent turn of mind, only working with the cops when she has to, she knows when she is over her head and a serial killer is definitely way above her comfort zone. Werewolves, pissed off ghosts and other 'bumps in the night' are more her specialty but human predators she leaves to the authorities.

Then the victims rise up from the water, shift into animal form and attack the men in blue, killing most of them before heading off to a new location and placing the case right back smack in Sylvie's face. Despite her reluctance, she promises the newly widowed client and one of the surviving cops that she will find out who is messing with the dead. After all there is no one else who is remotely equipped to hunt down a member of the Magicus Mundi. and their scent is all over the newly bloody crime scene.

Complicating matters is a witch who is gunning for revenge, another witch who blames Sylvie (not without cause) for the loss of her powers and her assistant and business partner Alex who is a crackerjack researcher, horribly vulnerable to magic yet determined to put herself in danger in order to help.

Benedict's brooding private eye gives her series a film noir feel sparked with the psychedelic colors of inordinately powerful paranormal adversaries. Sylvie Lightner's defenses depend more on whom and what she knows than any magical talent of her own greatly increasing the intensity of the storyline. Her reluctant sense of morality and drive to protect innocents make her one of most appealing in the relatively new crop of urban fantasy heroes. GODS AND MONSTERS is book three in the Shadows Inquiries series.