A CIRCLE OF SOULS - Preetham Grandhi

From the back of the book: The sleepy town of Newbury, Connecticut is shocked when a little girl is found brutally murdered. The town's top detective, perplexed by a complet lack of leads, calls in FBI agent Leia Bines, an expert in cases involving children.

Meanwhile, Dr Peter Gram, a psychiatrist as Nebury's hospital, searches desperately for the cause of seven-year-old Naya Hastings' devastating nightmares. Afraid that she might hurt herself in the midst of a torturous episode, Naya's parents have turned to the bright young doctor as their only hope.

The situations confronting Leia and Peter converge when Naya begins dreaing chilling images of murder after being bombarded by the disturbing images in her dreams. Amazingly, her sketches are the only clues to the crime that has panicked Newbury residents. Against her better judgement, Leia explores the clues in Naya's crude drawings, only to set off an alarming chain of events.

In this stunning psychological thriller, innocence gives way to evil and trust lies forgotten in a web of deceit, fear and murder.

*****
I received a message on Goodreads from the author, if I would like to read and review his book. I jumped on the chance as it is in the genre I take pleasure in reading, mystery-thriller. I was also pleased that this promised a hint of paranormal. This book delivered in aces.

This is an amazingly fast book to read. The story moves along at a good clip, divided between the doctor's story, the investigators', the killer, the children. Having Lady K in my life, I had a hard time reading the sections dealing with the abduction and murder of 7 year old girl, but Grandhi handles it well and wasn't superfluously awful in detail.
The author is a psychiatrist working with young children and it shows in the writing. He seems more comfortable writing the scenes with Dr Peter Gram. I could feel the emotions Gram went through: warmth and concern working with Naya, aggravation with the insurance pre-authorization agents, disconcerted as he comprehended the metaphysical aspects of the investigation.
I stayed up late several nights to read "just one more page..one more chapter". The book affected my dreams the night I stopped reading after a chapter dealing with the killer. I made sure I stopped after a Dr Gram chapter after that.

Four dream affecting beans....