Whisper of Evil

Whisper of Evil by Kay Hooper

In the little town of Silence, three prominent men have just been permanently muted, victims of a killer’s savage vengeance. Now the whole town is talking about the dark secrets that have come to light after the murders. And Nell Gallagher, who left Silence years ago, comes home to settle with a past she finds inextricably tangled up in the vicious killings. To survive, she’ll need to listen to all of her psychic powers, and risks being silenced in Silence.

--Whisper of Evil by Kay Hooper, Published 2002 by Bantam Books. Audio book produced by Recorded Books.

Three men have been murdered in the little town of Silence. Each has been killed in a different manner and there seems to be no connection between them. Slowly, it is revealed that each man harbored a deep, dark secret. But their secrets were unrelated, so what connects the three?

Deciding that the police need help, the town mayor secretly requests assistance from the FBI. Bishop, head of the Special Crimes Unit and a gifted profiler, suspects the killer is a cop. He decides to send in agents from his own unit to investigate. Nell Gallagher is perfect for the job since she’s from Silence and needs to go home to settle her recently-deceased father’s estate.

She’s barely arrived in town when a fourth man is killed. A link to the other three is suspected, but no deep, dark secrets come to light. Through her psychic visions, Nell discovers the connection between the first three victims is her own sister, Hailey, who left Silence a year earlier. She begins to suspect that Hailey is not only the connection, but may also be the murderer.

Nell is also reunited with her first love, Max Tanner. Max is Sheriff Ethan Cole’s number one suspect, but his evidence is flimsy and Nell knows he’s innocent of the crimes.

As she digs deeper into the mystery, her renewed relationship with Max deepens and she is compelled to confess the reason she disappeared all those years ago. The Gallagher family curse, the source of her psychic powers, drove most of the Gallagher family members insane. Her father’s insanity was a need to obsessively hold on to his wife’s and his daughter’s love. When seventeen-year-old Nell discovered the lengths her father would go to hold on to that love, she felt her only option was to run away lest he try to hurt Max.

Now reunited, can she, Max, Ethan, her partner, and the police, uncover the rest of the secrets and find the killer before he can claim his fifth victim?

If you were put off by the predictability of Touching Evil, don’t let it put you off the rest of the series. Whisper of Evil, the second in this series, contains all the twists and turns and secrets you’d expect from a good mystery story. I’ve only barely touched on some of those secrets here and I’ve revealed a lot. I give this story FOUR STARS and tomorrow I’ll begin Sense of Evil, the third in the series.