Dewey’s heroine, Detective Jane Perry, is as real as a fictional character can get. She carries her need for alcohol and cigarettes, like her badge, her gun, and her outrageous behavior, as emblems of intense childhood abuse. Protector is a page-turning thriller with paranormal undertones that ties Jane’s psychic powers to the investigation of two seemingly unrelated homicide cases. The first is a car bombing that kills the Stover family, who Jane and her partner, Chris, are protecting. Feeling guilty over not being able to save the Stover child, Amy, Jane begins to have visions connected with the next case immediately absorbing her energy. Another set of parents is killed, but the daughter, young Emily Lawrence, escapes. Believed to hold the key to the brutal stabbing death of her parents locked deep in her terrorized memory, and being stalked by the murderer, Emily is put under the protection of Detective Perry, with whom she feels a mysterious connection.

Action filled, spell-binding and even spine-tingling, the plot will seize and hold the attention of any thrill seeker, but there is much more here to invite the reader’s deeper attention. There’s the Colorado landscape, the inner workings of the Denver Police Department, multitudinous red-herrings, astute social commentary, exploration of "the pool of shared consciousness," an examination of the nature of human attachments and the concept of protection, and best of all, clues into the workings of our own dark psyches as we share in Jane’s profound searchings into self sabotage, fear and freedom. Jane’s boss uses a metaphor to help her see how she’s hanging onto the towrope of a boat and it’s pulling her under and drowning her. She keeps holding on because she’s just too afraid to let go of that towrope. Dewey’s work is about how to help us all to let go of whatever towrope we’re hanging onto.