Out of the Shadows

Out of the Shadows by Kay Hooper

A picture-perfect Tennessee town has just become a monster's hunting ground. Two bodies are found tortured to death. A third person goes missing. What little evidence is left behind defies all explanation. Is the terror just beginning? Or have the good citizens of Gladstone harbored a dark secret for a long time? Sheriff Miranda Knight is determined to make her small town safe once more. And she does what she swore she would never do: involve FBI profiler Noah Bishop. He's the one man who knows about her unique abilities, and that knowledge almost destroyed her and her sister years ago. Now, as Bishop arrives with his team of agents, Miranda must learn to trust him and use her abilities once more. For they're about to go on the hunt for a killer whose madness has no bounds, a killer who knows exactly how to destroy Miranda: by preying on her sister.

--Out of the Shadows by Kay Hooper, Published 2000 by Bantam Books. Audio book produced by Recorded Books.



Review

Ahhh, finally, Bishop has found his man…or rather, his woman.

This wonderful series by Kay Hooper started with Stealing Shadows where we first meet the enigmatic Bishop and learn, through a few teasing hints, that he is searching for someone. In Hiding in the Shadows we learn this mysterious someone is a woman and that Bishop would be finding that person very soon. In Out of the Shadows, he finds her, and she is not happy to see him.

Miranda Knight, sheriff of the small town of Gladstone, TN, is dealing with a series of murders with mysterious circumstances. Teenagers are being killed in strange and gruesome ways and no one knows why. Miranda has no choice but to call in the FBI. She doesn’t want to do it, because she knows doing so will bring the one man she doesn’t want to see. Noah Bishop, FBI Agent and former lover. But the people of her community are more important than her pride and she makes the call.

Bishop arrives with two other agents and Miranda does her best to keep an emotional distance from Bishop due to what she felt was a betrayal by him more than eight years ago. That betrayal caused her to take her younger sister, Bonnie, and disappear. Now they are reunited, and together, Miranda and Bishop must hunt down the mysterious and wily murderer and at the same time, reconcile their past. But they have to be careful, because there’s more than one murderer lurking in the shadows.


I guess it’s no secret by now that Kay Hooper is one of my favorite authors. Her Bishop series is one of the reasons. Some authors rely too heavily on a character’s psychic power to drive the story. Others barely mention it at all. Kay uses psychic powers like salt—just enough to enhance the flavor of the story without overpowering it. If you take out the psychic elements, Miranda and Bishop are still able to solve the mystery through pure detective work…they just enhance it with a little bit of salt.


I give this story FOUR STARS.