Blood Ties

December 14, 2009
Too many interchangeable doll-like victims and a by-the-numbers plot mar bestseller Hooper’s conclusion to her paranormal thriller trilogy that began with Blood Dreams
and Blood Sins
. When a serial killer tortures, dismembers, and dumps eight women in eight weeks in Tennessee and adjacent states, Noah Bishop, head of the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit, gets on the case, along with Noah’s touch-telepath and seer wife, Miranda, and special agent Hollis Templeton, a profiler-in-training and medium who can self-heal and see auras. Hollis and special investigator Diana Brisco, also a medium and healer, travel to the “gray time,” a corridor between life and death where a young spirit, Brooke, helps them connect the killings to a past threat. Series fans and newcomers alike will appreciate the appendixes, which include bios of Special Crime Unit agents and definitions of their various paranormal abilities.

February 1, 2010
When the victims of a serial killer in the Southeast are found to be connected to earlier Special Crimes Unit cases, it becomes clear that the unit itself is the target. At the same time, SCUan elite FBI unit of persons with paranormal abilities founded and led by Noah Bishopis threatened by disturbing leaks. In this third in the trilogy (after Blood Dreams, 2007, and Blood Sins, 2009), unit members are still dealing with the exceptional psychic energy surrounding the killing of megalomanic cult leader Adam Deacon Samuel in Blood Sins. Medium Hollis Templetons increasing abilities enable her to help new investigator Diana Brisco, a medium who is able to travel in and out of gray time, a corridor between life and death. Hunkered down in the small town of Serenade, Tennessee, SCU members find themselves fighting an adversary with similar abilities, as it becomes clear that the evil Samuels legacy lives on. Footnotes and brief bios of unit members provide background for the trilogy in this compulsively readable paranormal thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)