Blood Ties

Blood Ties by Kay Hooper

A series of grisly murders has left a trail of blood across three states, bringing the Special Crimes Unit to a small Tennessee town. There, two more brutal killings lure Noah Bishop and the SCU into what may be the ultimate trap, and lead Special Agent Hollis Templeton into a dangerous attraction—and a serial murder investigation that turns very, very personal. In her time with the SCU, Hollis has shown an uncanny ability to survive even the deadliest attacks. But what she can’t know is that this killer intends to destroy the team from within. As the body count climbs, and Bishop and his agents race to uncover the true identity of their enemy, not even their special senses can warn them just how bloody, and how terrifyingly close, the truth will be.

--Blood Ties by Kay Hooper, Copyright ©2010 by Kay Hooper, published by Bantam Books

My Review

Blood Ties picks up a few months after Blood Sins in the town of Serenade, TN. The Reverend Adam Deacon Samuel may be dead, but his reach goes far beyond the grave. He was a prophet after all, and a madman with a mission. He knew his death was imminent and, like all good madmen, made the appropriate arrangements.

The SCU team, headed by Miranda Bishop, is sent to the town of Serenade to investigate an unusual murder. While there, they stumble across another body, and almost become victims themselves when a sniper starts shooting at them. After researching the two victims, they discover they’re both linked to past SCU cases. The SCU has an enemy, and it seems that enemy is drawing all the agents together in one spot, determined to destroy the unit once and for all.

But who is the enemy? And why is he so determined to bring down the SCU and Noah Bishop in particular? And just how far will he go to achieve his goal?

Pretty short review, especially for the first finished book of the new year, but I can’t say any more without saying a lot more, and if I said a lot more, I might as well tell you the entire story. And where’s the fun in that?

In my review of the previous story, Blood Ties, I mentioned that it was not a stand-alone read, that you needed the previous “Blood” book to understand that one. Well, you need both of those to understand this one. It’s an excellent series with very intricate, delicate connections that must be read to be understood. There are a lot of details and you really do have to pay attention (the previously mentioned flowchart wouldn’t hurt), but in the end, it’s all worth it.

And if you think long and hard about the title of this story, you’ll realize “the truth underneath it all.” I did, and I knew the answer to the biggest secret long before anyone else in the story did, except maybe Bishop himself.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

Blood Sins

Blood Sins by Kay Hooper

Young, vulnerable, attractive, Tessa Gray looked like the perfect victim. Which was why Noah Bishop of the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit recruited the novice operative to use as bait for a killer hidden inside the Church of the Everlasting Sin–a fortified mountain compound where at least two women have already been murdered in ways that defy explanation. By entering the cult’s compound, Tessa will expose herself to the dark magnetism of its leader and his fanatically loyal followers. Once she’s inside, no one, not even Bishop or the town’s chief of police, can guarantee she’ll come out alive. And not even Tessa knows if she’s strong enough to resist the lure of a killer who is less than human.

--Blood Sins by Kay Hooper, Copyright ©2009 by Kay Hooper, published by Bantam Books

My Review

Young widow Tessa Gray has been targeted by the Church of the Everlasting Sin—and that’s exactly what she wants. Working undercover for Noah Bishop and the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit, part of Tessa’s job is to find out why (so far) two people have been murdered, one of them an undercover member of the SCU. Sarah had been living inside the compound, gathering information and, whenever possible, smuggling out “special” children so they could no longer be used for the Reverend Samuel’s questionable purposes. Now she’s dead, her body found several miles downriver from the Church’s compound.

When the Church starts to actively recruit Tessa, she is reluctant but plays along. After all, how else is she supposed to get information that will help the SCU bust open the Church and expose the Reverend? Things get a little dicey when the local police chief, Sawyer Cavanaugh, makes his suspicions of the church obvious. Tessa must decide if she can trust Sawyer and if in doing so, can she risk exposing him to the evil that is surely a part of the Church?

A normal Kay Hooper story involves a mystery along with a romance between two of its characters. This story veers from that norm, in that there’s an attraction between Tessa and Sawyer, and that’s it. The rest of the story, say 80% or so, is all about the mystery of the Reverend Adam Deacon Samuel and his connection to Blood Dreams’ serial killer. And even when that mystery is resolved, there are still too many unanswered questions, leading to the twelfth story in the series, Blood Ties.

It’s a good story with enough action to keep the story moving, but it definitely isn’t a stand-alone read. It’s hard to fully understand what’s going on unless you’ve read Blood Dreams and if at all possible, the entire previous 10 books in the Bishop/SCU series. I have, and I’m still a little bit in the dark. Drawing a flowchart detailing all the characters and their attributes along with their varied connections probably would have helped.

I give this story THREE STARS.

Blood Dreams

Blood Dreams by Kay Hooper

Dani Justice knows all about monsters. They haunt her dreams—and her life. But she never expected to find herself on the trail of a real flesh-and-blood predator so cunning, he’s eluded the best law enforcement could send against him; so deadly, he doesn’t hesitate to kill even a senator’s daughter. Or a cop. Dani doesn’t want to hunt this killer. But she doesn’t have a choice. She alone commands a weapon powerful enough to stop him. And she knows something even Bishop of the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit doesn’t know. Dani knows how the hunt ends. It ends in fire. And blood. And death. What she doesn’t know is who will survive.

--Blood Dreams by Kay Hooper, Copyright ©2008 by Kay Hooper, published by Bantam Books

My Review

We begin in Boston, where a serial killer has the city in his grip. Twelve women killed in only thirty days, the last being the daughter of a prominent senator. Bishop and members of his team join the “regular” FBI agents on the scene to aid in the investigation, but secretly, Bishop has dispatched members of his team to a small town outside Atlanta, which he is convinced is the killer’s next hunting ground. But why would the killer move from a big city like Boston to such a small town like Venture?

Dani Justice and her twin sister Paris are from Venture, and though Dani lives in Atlanta now, she returns to Venture under the cover of being there for her sister as she goes through a divorce. Unfortunately, returning to Venture means meeting up with the local sheriff, her old boyfriend Marcus Purcell. As much as she might want to, she can’t avoid him, especially when women start disappearing.

Her dreams aren’t helping much. Every night she has the same dream of her, Bishop and Agent Hollis Templeton being trapped in a burning building as they hunt for the killer. But now the dreams are changing. Marc is suddenly in the dream and where before Miranda—Bishop’s wife—was in danger, that’s changing too. What does it all mean, and does Dani have the ability to change the dream’s outcome before someone else, someone she knows, winds up on the killer’s table?

Blood Dreams is the tenth book in Kay Hooper’s Bishop/Special Crime Unit series and the first in the “Blood” trilogy. Unlike the other books in the B/SCU series, this book doesn’t really “end.” Several questions are left deliberately unanswered, like: who was the killer working with? How does Hollis fit in with this unknown’s plans? What role does the town’s unusual charismatic church/cult play in all of this?

The answers to these and many others will (may?) be answered in Blood Sins and Blood Ties, books eleven and twelve in the series. Stay tuned!

I give this story THREE AND A HALF STARS.

Sleeping with Fear

Sleeping with Fear by Kay Hooper

Riley Crane woke up fully dressed, a gun under her pillow, and covered in blood. Even more frightening, she didn't remember what happened the night before. In fact, she barely remembered the previous three weeks.

An ex-army officer, now a federal agent assigned to the Special Crimes Unit, Riley was a chameleon - a clairvoyant who could blend in with her surroundings, be anyone or anything she chose to be. The SCU's expert on the occult, she'd been sent to the beachfront cottage on Opal Island by her enigmatic chief, Noah Bishop, to investigate reports of dangerous occult activity.

But that was three weeks ago. Now she's awoken to discover that she's got a sexy new man in her life and an unreliable memory, and that the clairvoyant abilities she's always depended on to protect her are MIA. Worse yet, with SCU resources stretched thinner than ever before, Riley is alone and without backup, feeling her way through a deadly game of blindman's buff, where no one around her is quite who or what they seem. And a bizarre murder is only the first jarring reminder of how high the stakes really are.

Bishop wants Riley off the case. So does powerful local D.A. Ash Prescott. Both her old retired army buddy Gordon Skinner and Sheriff Jake Ballard believe she can catch a vicious killer. But one of these four men knows exactly what's going on in this coastal community, and that's knowledge Riley desperately needs. For what Riley can't remember is more than enough to cost her her life. This time evil isn't just closer than she thinks - it's already there.

--Sleeping with Fear by Kay Hooper, Copyright © 2006 by Kay Hooper


My Review:

To wake up covered in blood and no memory of how it got there is a great way to grab the reader’s interest from page one, I have to admit. Once again, Kay Hooper steps away from the conventional murder mystery set-up and throws a handful of twists at her protagonist Riley, including amnesia, lost time, a man she doesn’t remember falling in love with and a grisly murder. Oh, and Satanists.

Yeah, I said Satanists. Seems this grisly murder has definite satanic hallmarks and Riley, being the SCU’s occult expert, is the natural choice to help the sheriff solve the murder. But can she, with her memories of the past three weeks gone, her psychic senses AWOL, the aforementioned lost time and the constant drain on her physical energy reserves? She has to, otherwise, she might never be normal again.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

Chill of Fear

Chill of Fear by Kay Hooper

FBI agent Quentin Hayes always knew he had an unusual talent, even before he was recruited by Noah Bishop for the controversial Special Crimes Unit. But, as gifted as he is, for twenty years he’s been haunted by a heartbreaking unsolved murder that took place at The Lodge, a secluded Victorian-era resort in Tennessee. Now he’s returned one final time, determined to put the mystery to rest. Diana Brisco has come there hoping to unlock the mystery of her troubled past. Instead, she is assailed by nightmares and the vision of a child who vanished from The Lodge years ago. And an FBI agent is trying to convince her that she isn’t crazy but that she has a rare gift, a gift that could catch a killer. Quentin knows that this is his last chance to solve a case that has become a dangerous obsession. But can he persuade Diana to help him, knowing what it could cost her? For something cold and dark and pure evil is stalking the grounds of The Lodge. Something Diana may not survive. Something Quentin never felt before: the Chill of Fear.

--Chill of Fear by Kay Hooper, Copyright © 2006 Bantam Books


My Review:

Number 8 in the Bishop/Special Crime Unit series, this story takes a different track than the others in the series, and sets up the darker twist that the series is about to take.

Quentin Hayes has always been haunted by the murder of a little girl he came to know one summer long ago at The Lodge, a secluded resort in Tennessee. He regularly returns to the town of Leisure to pore over the case files, researching every little fact until there simply aren’t any more facts to research. But still he persists, hoping this visit is the one that breaks the case. Finally, twenty-five years after Missy’s death, this may finally be the year he solves the case.

Diana Brisco is at The Lodge attending a therapy seminar, hoping this time she can finally work out the demons that haunt her. Since the age of eleven, the deeply disturbed woman has been in and out of therapy, trying almost every anti-psychotic medicine known to man. Now, finally clean of all the drugs, her mind is struggling to figure out who she is, who she was always supposed to be.

When Diana and Quentin meet, a connection is made, opening pathways in each other that had never been explored before and maybe, just maybe, they can lay each other’s ghosts to rest.



This is a new twist in the series because the SCU is not being called in on an unusual case. This case comes from Quentin’s past, one he’s tried but just can’t seem to put to rest. Diana’s trying to put her own past to rest so she can move forward into her future. While the other books in this series all deal with evil in one form or another, the evil in this story takes on a new form, one bent on justice and revenge.


I give this story FOUR STARS.

Hunting Fear

Hunting Fear by Kay Hooper

He's no ordinary kidnapper. Not only does he strike again and again, but he collects the ransom, gets away safely, and leaves his helpless hostages dead. Now, after months of eluding the best that law enforcement can put against him, this monster has left nothing in his wake but a cold trail of unconnected victims.

He's no ordinary cop. Lucas Jordan, a key agent and profiler in Noah Bishop's Special Crimes Unit, has an extraordinary skill: he locates missing people. But his uncanny ability comes with a price, and his methods rouse mistrust in the hard-nosed cops forced to call him into their investigations.

Now Jordan has come to Clayton County, North Carolina, where the latest in a string of kidnapping victims has turned up dead. Complicating the situation is the presence - and predictions - of someone who's even more of an outsider than Jordan himself: carnival psychic Samantha Burke, a woman out of his own haunted past. Her warnings meet with skepticism from the local police but spur Jordan on to do what he does best: hunt fear.

But the killer he is hunting is hunting Jordan - and he's already several moves ahead in a twisted game whose rules Jordan must learn in order to have a fighting chance. For his psychopathic opponent has extended a very personal challenge, and he's about to threaten the one life the profiler values even more than his own.

--Hunting Fear by Kay Hooper, Copyright © 2004 by Kay Hooper, audio copyrighted 2004 by Brilliance Audio

My Review:

Book 7 in the Bishop/Special Crime Unit series, this story starts like several others in the series, with a look at the past at how Bishop recruited another of his prized psychic agents. We then fast-forward to “present day” and dig into the story. This story’s look at the past, however, contains an important clue to the present.

Lucas Jordan and his partner arrive in Golden, North Carolina to investigate a kidnapping-turned-murder. There, he finds out the circus, or rather, the Carnival After Dark is in town, along with his former lover, Samantha Burke. A strong psychic in her own right, Sam is in Golden because of a vivid dream. In that dream, if the kidnapper/killer wasn’t stopped in Golden, he would go on for years. And Luke had to be the one to stop him.

When an author creates a series that involves the same “unusual” element—in this case, psychic abilities—that author needs to find new ways to make the story interesting. I like that Sam works in a carnival, and the repeated mentions of her lacking the “credibility” to join the SCU thanks to her work in the carnival. The gruesome methods of the killer in this story back up his audacious statement that he doesn’t kill anyone. Obviously, he does. He is responsible for the deaths of these people, but you can actually see the logic behind his illogic statement and that makes him even scarier. And, of course, what’s a good mystery without a little twist at the end?


I give this story THREE STARS.

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.

Hiding in the Shadows

Hiding in the Shadows by Kay Hooper

Accident victim Faith Parker has done what her doctors feared she never would: awakened from the coma that held her prisoner for weeks. But she has no memory of the crash that nearly killed her--or the life that led up to it. Nor does she remember journalist Dinah Leighton, the steadfast friend who visited her in the hospital...until she disappeared without a trace. Now as Faith begins to regain her strength, she's shocked by intimate dreams of a man she doesn't recognize and tortured by visions of violence that feel painfully real. Something inexplicable ties her lost memories to Dinah's chilling fate. But even as Faith tries to understand the connection and reach out to save Dinah, death is stalking both women. And one of them will not escape its lethal grasp.

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


My Summary

A take-off on the “accident victim has amnesia” theme, Hiding in the Shadows takes the tried-and-true, twists it, stands it on its end and produces and ending unlike any I’ve read.

The victim of a single-car accident, where drugs and alcohol were presumed to be the cause, Faith Parker awakens from a six-week coma with no memory of the accident, or who she was before the accident. She is eventually released from the hospital to resume her life. Problem is, with no memory, she has no idea what that life was…except…since awakening, she’s been having deep, intimate dreams of a man and recollections of pain and torture that are frighteningly real.

When she sees the man of her dreams on television, pleading for information about his missing fiancée, reporter Dinah Leighton, she goes to see him and learns of her own connection to Dinah. Now Faith, Kane and Kane’s friend Noah Bishop (you knew he had to show up somewhere!) have to dig into the story Dinah was working on to find out who would want her killed, and why. Faith must also figure out why she appears to be taking on more and more of Dinah’s mannerisms, why she has memories of Dinah and Kane that she simply shouldn’t, and whether or not she can hold on to her sanity long enough to resolve the mystery.

My Review

To me, this story stands out in the Bishop/Special Crimes Unit series because it’s not your straightforward murder mystery. The police and FBI are involved, of course, but they’re not the ones working to solve the mystery. It’s mostly Kane and Faith, with help from the police and Bishop. In the other stories, the police and FBI Agents take a more direct role in solving the case. It’s also different because…well, without giving away the ending, it’s different because of how it ends. ‘Nuff said!

I give this story FOUR STARS.




On a side note, it will be some time before I publish my review of I Never Fancied Him Anyway. I am reading it, but as of March 1, I will be involved in an intense one-month training session for a new job. I'm doing as much pre-studying as I can before March 1, so I have precious little free time for leisure reading. Audio book reviews will continue because I will listen to them as I commute to and from training. I'll publish my review of I Never Fancied Him Anyway as soon as I can.

Stealing Shadows

Stealing Shadows by Kay Hooper

The first in a planned "thrill-ogy" of suspense novels, this is a serial killer tale charged with deeply felt dread and romance that will steal readers' hearts. Cassie Neill has inherited a psychic gift from her mother that is a mixed blessing at best because it enables her to enter the minds of serial rapists and killers. From her aunt, she inherits a house tucked away in a corner of quiet little Ryan's Bluff, North Carolina, where she takes refuge, hoping to distance herself from the grueling work she's done for the Los Angeles Police Department. But, just as there's no rest for the weary, there's no rest for the wicked either, and visions of a deranged man's plans to kill prompt Cassie to visit Ben Ryan, the small town's prosecuting attorney. Skeptical but interested, Ben finds himself drawn toward the oddly bewitching Cassie, just as she is pulled ever further into the psychotic soul of evil. Whitney Scott, Booklist Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

--Stealing Shadows by Kay Hooper, Published 2000 by Bantam Books. Audio book produced by Recorded Books.


My Summary

The start of Kay Hooper’s celebrated “Bishop/Special Crimes Unit” series, Stealing Shadows follows Cassie Neill as she pays a visit to Judge Ben Ryan to report that a murder will take place in his small town. She doesn’t know who the intended victim is or when the murder will occur, just that it will. Though Ben seems a little more open to her psychic vision than the Sheriff, whom she also visited, there’s nothing anyone can do. Until, of course, a body is found. And another. And another.

It doesn’t take long for tensions in town to rise and Ben and Matt turn to Cassie for help. Cassie is reluctant, having retreated to the small North Carolina town to escape the pressures of hunting vicious killers in California, but feels it is her duty to use her gift to help solve the crimes that cross her path. But at what cost to Cassie’s life?

Review

I enjoy Kay Hooper’s writing and certain aspects of the paranormal and this series is tailor-made for me. Stealing Shadows is a very believable story of a serial killer and the cop/lawyer/psychic team determined to bring him to justice. It’s a wonderful story with a great unexpected twist that I didn’t see coming, even though I’d read this story before!

I give this story FOUR STARS.

Sense of Evil

Sense of Evil Kay Hooper

The victims are always the same; beautiful, successful and blond. Yet someone was able to coax these intelligent women away from safety. Someone was able to gain their trust long enough to do the unthinkable. Their shocking murders have terrified the inhabitants of a small peaceful town and its police chief, Rafe Sullivan, knows he has to find answers fast before another woman is lured to her death.
.

--Sense of Evil by Kay Hooper, Published 2003 by Bantam Books. Audio book produced by Recorded Books.


My Synopsis:

The peaceful southern town of Hastings, South Carolina is destroyed when a serial killer strikes. Three victims so far, all blond, beautiful and successful. Police Chief Rafe Sullivan requests assistance from the FBI and is dismayed when he meets the team’s lead investigator—blond, beautiful (and psychic) Isabel Adams.

Isabel convinces Rafe that she’s the best agent for the job because of her successful track record. She’s also been tracking this particular serial killer ever since he killed her best friend ten years ago. Working with her is new agent Hollis Templeton (from Touch of Evil) who, because of her own encounter with evil, has become a medium (she communicates with spirits).

Rafe, Isabel, Hollis and Rafe’s top detective Mallory Beck get to work on finding the killer. His previous M.O. was to strike once a week for six weeks, so they need to work fast before he claims his fourth victim.

The first victim, Jamie Brauer, had been acting oddly in the weeks leading up to her death. Afterward, details of her secret sex life have come to light and the police begin to find connections between her and the other two victims, but it’s not enough. Who else did she play her closet games with, and what happened to the box of photographs her younger sister said she found a few weeks before her sister was killed?

A reporter goes missing, but she’s a brunette, not blond. Did she get too close to the truth and become the fourth victim, or does her disappearance have another explanation? And is there a connection to yet another recently discovered dead body, months old?

Isabel is on the killer’s list, but is she fourth, fifth or sixth? After a fourth blond victim is found, Rafe and Isabel know that Isabel is next. Together, the team race to find a box of photos that hold the key to solving the entire mystery


My Review:

Comparing the three books in this series, I think Whisper of Evil was the best. It was clean, crisp and just enough twists to keep the reader interested through to the final page. Touching Evil was good, but predictable in a lot of ways. Sense of Evil, by comparison, had excellent elements, especially with the sex angle and the connection between the victims—and an ending that, for me, I wasn’t really expecting. (Well, maybe a little…you know how you draw up a list of suspects in your mind? This person was on my list, but mainly because I figured if there was going to be a twist, this person fits the twist.) My main issue with Sense of Evil was that there were too many characters. I had no trouble keeping track of the main characters, but when the individual reporters and police kept taking the stage with their stories, I got a little confused. They all came together in the end, but it was still a little confusing.


Because of this confusion, I give this story THREE and a HALF STARS. If I could have kept better track of the characters, maybe I would have made it four.

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.

Touching Evil

Touching Evil by Kay Hooper

Some cops think police sketch artist Maggie Barnes is telepathic. That she can actually enter the victims minds. Only Maggie knows the truth behind her rare talent. And she isn’t telling.

--Touching Evil by Kay Hooper, Published 2001 by Bantam Books. Audio book produced by Recorded Books.

Maggie Barnes is a Seattle police sketch artist. She is working with the victims of “the Blindfold Rapist,” trying to piece together their memories to come up with a sketch of the rapist. John Garret, the brother of one of the victims, involves himself in the police investigation. Frustrated by the police's lack of progress, John brings in a friend and his partner who happen to be agents with a special unit of the FBI. As the case progresses, Maggie’s empathic abilities, which aid her in creating her sketches, grow stronger and a mysterious connection to a series of murders in the past is uncovered. Can the police put the pieces together before the killer claims his next victim?

First, a confession. I read this book, and the others in its series, when they were published, but it’s been so long that reading them now is like reading them for the first time. I will be listening to audio book versions of these stories.

Touching Evil follows a rather predictable pattern that can be seen all too often in trade detective stories. The pretty, female detective—or police employed civilian in this case—hunts the killer and becomes a potential victim. In this case, the killer is caught before he goes after Maggie, but it’s obvious she was next on his list. She falls in love with the rich-guy hero who elbows his way into the investigation where he doesn’t belong and because he’s rich and connected, no one has the guts to tell him to butt out. And, of course, he falls in love with her. However, if you can get beyond these predictable elements, there is an interesting story about an empath, a serial killer, and the detective work that goes into solving the mystery.

When I checked Amazon.com for their editorial review, I discovered that the “Evil” trilogy is actually the second trilogy in the “Bishop” series. I should have started with the “Shadow” trilogy. However, since I don’t yet own the “Shadow” trilogy but I do own the “Evil” trilogy, I will continue with that set, then review the “Shadow” trilogy once I have those (which will be by the first part of February). These stories are part of a series, but they can be read as individual stories, so this flip-flopping won’t bother me, although it may be irritating to others. So if you’d like to read the “Bishop” series, start with Stealing Shadows.

I remember enjoying this story when it was first published and probably would have given it four stars back then. Now I feel I can only give it three.