Because New York City insurance investigator Jeff Resnick was starting a new job the next morning, he passed up one more game of pool at his favorite watering hole even though he was winning. Moments after he left the Irish pub, he was mugged and beaten with a baseball bat. He suffered a severe concussion and barely survived the ordeal that left him with excruciating headaches and vivid images flashing through his mind.

After ten days in the hospital, he decided to move in with his half-brother, Richard Alpert, during his recuperation although the decision wasn't his first choice. Jeff had been out of work for six months due to downsizing at his former work place and was excited about starting a new job when the mugging occurred.

Richard lived in Buffalo, New York, and was extremely well off living a lifestyle Jeff had never known after Richard inherited the Alpert family fortune. Once installed in his brother's house, Jeff soon realized he was having hallucinations about a murder of someone he did not know.

When Jeff realized he had a sixth sense about what happened in someone else’s life, he felt compelled to look into the man’s death. Eventually he found out the victim had ties to his brother. He first talked Richard into driving him around, and then drew him into becoming more involved in helping Jeff find out who murdered the investment banker. The deeper the two delved into the murder, the more they found their own lives in danger.

Murder on the Mind is the first in the popular Jeff Resnick series written by author L. L. Bartlett. Bartlett also writes the well-received Victoria Square Mysteries under the name of Lorraine Bartlett and the Booktown Mysteries as Lorna Barrett.

This was a thoroughly entertaining mystery with a bit of the paranormal throughout. Not only was the mystery interesting, but so was the development of the relationship between the half-brothers. In the beginning they were both reluctant to live together and they had a lot of issues to work out, but the author did a wonderful job of walking the two through their problems with one another. I highly recommended this book and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

I picked up Murder on the Mind from Amazon Kindle only because it was free and I was looking for new authors and stories to read. Finding out that Bartlett wrote at least five more books and several short stories in this series was welcome news. You can pick up your own copy at Amazon.com.