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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Dead doesn't necessarily mean gone.", January 26, 2010
"Blood Ties," by Kay Hooper, is set in the small town of Serenade, Tennessee, where a runner stumbles over the body of a man who has been tortured and murdered. The local sheriff, Des Duncan, who is not equipped to deal with such matters, calls in the FBI. The agents who show up are members of the highly trained Special Crimes Unit, all of whom have one or more psychic abilities. When more dead bodies turn up, the SCU suspects that a serial killer is on the loose.
In the absence of Noah Bishop, who is the chief of the SCU, Special Agent Miranda Bishop heads up the team. Quentin Hayes, Hollis Templeton, Diana Brisco, and Reese DeMarco also figure prominently in the case. As the days wear on, a highly skilled sniper starts taking potshots at members of the SCU as well as at noncombatants. In spite of their impressive intellect, training, and manpower, Miranda and her colleagues begin to feel like sitting ducks. Furthermore, they have no idea who the mastermind is behind all the carnage. Fortunately, Diana's psychic abilities provide a valuable clue; she learns that past events are connected to the crimes that they are now investigating.
Hooper has concocted a complicated plot featuring a diabolical conspiracy that will test the courage and stamina of the SCU. Diana is particularly vulnerable, since she has the ability to walk with spirits in "an eerie corridor between life and death." The danger is that someday, she may not be able to reemerge from this netherworld. Hollis Templeton, an agent in training, is also at risk, since her psychic abilities have evolved so rapidly that she sometimes overreaches. There is also a subplot about the ever deepening relationships between Quentin and Diana and Reese and Hollis. Most of the novel, however, is bogged down by repetitious scenes in which various individuals offer theories, track down leads, and dodge bullets. Although the author audaciously kills off some innocent characters, she throws in the obligatory surprise ending, in which a nefarious plan is revealed.
If you are new to the Bishop/Special Crimes Unit series, you might want to read the earlier installments first. Jumping in now may be a bit bewildering. You would also do well to refer to the author's helpful mini-biographies of her characters and her glossary of psychic terms (located at the back of the book). Since "Blood Ties" has dozens of characters and alludes to earlier novels in the series, readers will need all the help they can get to keep them focused. Those who have no patience with auras, the spirit world, clairvoyants, seers, and telepaths may want to skip this one. Even if you find psychic phenomena intriguing, especially when coupled with violence and a touch of romance, "Blood Ties" is a bit too rambling and melodramatic to earn more than a marginal recommendation.
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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Needlessly complicated, but a good read that ties in with the entire series, February 3, 2010
Hooper has concocted a rather complicated entry into the Special Crimes Unit series with a series of grisly murders in the small town of Serenade, Tennessee designed to lure Noah Bishop and his team into the open. Bishop's team is composed of highly trained psychics each with one or more abilities and since the last book Blood Sins and the death of Samuel, team members notice other abilities starting to appear and strengthen.
As the psychic team hunts for the vicious killer, he begins to take shots at the team and civilians. The mystery is further complicated by the addition of another killer who just likes to torture and kill for the pleasure of it. Why is the sniper killer targeting the team? Who is he? What has driven him to basically hold the town of Serenade hostage with fear? Bishop's team hunts for answers as they race against time to prevent other murders.
If you are familiar with the series, Special agents Quentin Hayes and Diana Brisco from Chill of Fear, Hollis Templeton from Touching Evil and Reese DeMarco (sorry don't remember where he came from) feature prominently. John and Maggie Garrett also from Touching Evil are featured in a short, but important part.
Even with Hollis and Diana stumbling across a couple of really horrendous murders in the beginning--it can't save the book from getting off to a bit of a slow start. The slow start is due to all of the complications and subplots. If you haven't read the series you may be confused, I know I was and I've read every single book in the Special Crimes Unit series. It would have helped if I'd read them all more recently than over a span of several years. I listened to the audio version and while the reader did a good job of making the book sound exciting, I still had to stop and visualize previous books and where the characters were coming from with their abilities. I finally went to Ms. Hooper's website to find the mini-biographies of her characters in the Special Crimes Unit.
This is not a badly put together book nor is it a bad read, just one that is needlessly complicated. It was like Ms. Hooper decided more is better when perhaps less would have been better in that the reader would be able to focus their mind on the story instead of going off on tangents trying to remember details from Blood Dreams and let alone the entire Evil, Fear, and Shadow series!
The book does end with an "open door" - which is obviously meant to lead into the next book.
If you haven't read any other books in the various Special Crime Unit series--here they are in chronological order: (By the way, on her website, Hooper states that each trilogy takes place over one year in order for her not to age her characters too quickly).
Stealing Shadows (Shadows Trilogy) (Cassie Neill heroine)
Hiding in the Shadows (Shadows Trilogy) (Faith Parker heroine)
Out of the Shadows (Miranda Knight and Noah Bishop story)
Touching Evil (Maggie Barnes, John Garrett and Hollis Templeton)
Whisper of Evil (Evil Trilogy) (Hooper, Kay. Evil Trilogy.) (Nell Gallagher)
Sense of Evil (Isabel Adams)
Hunting Fear (Lucas Jordan and Samantha Burke)
Chill of Fear (Quinten Hayes and Diana Brisco)
Sleeping with Fear (Riley Crane)
Blood Dreams (Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Novels) (Dani Justice)
Blood Sins: A Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Novel (Bishop/Special Crimes Unit: Blood Trilogy) (Tessa Grey)
Blood Ties (Hollis Templeton, Diana Brisco, Quinten Hayes, et al)
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Hooper is losing it - don't waste your time with it, February 12, 2010
The author has made her most recent books needlessly complicated. In this latest book she introduces new characters willy nilly, never develops many of them and as a result needlessly complicates things. Too frequently she resorts to the paranormal to escape from a poorly managed sequence of events. She has to resort to referencing previous novels to explain away things or characters and this adds nothing but more confusion.
Don't waste your time with this book, it is not up the standard of her earlier SCU books
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