Customer Reviews

Hello Darkness

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

After a tragic accident, Paris Gibson left her career as a Houston TV reporter, moved to Austin and became the areas most popular radio talk show host. One night a frequent caller, named Valentino, vented his anger at Paris because she persuaded his girlfriend to leave him. Incensed, he threatened to murder the girl within 72 hours. Her gut instinct tells her this call is no hoax and Paris contacts the Austin Police Department. It is at this time that she is reunited with former lover, Dean Malloy, the Department's crime phychologist. Along with the APD, Paris and Dean begin a race against time to save the young woman's life.

I have been a Sandra Brown fan for many years. She rarely disappoints me. This latest effort, Hello Darkness, is headed for the best-seller list. The story is awesome and I never use that word lightly. Brown weaves a story of teenagers involved with a Sex Club website. These kids communicate with members by posting messages on the website and meeting with anyone who stirs their interest. Mostly strangers. The founder of the site, a judge's daughter, is kidnapped when she tried to break up with a member who became obsessed with her.

The subject matter may offend some readers but the story is too good to pass on. It is a well-plotted thriller, with a dash of romance, that kept me on the edge of my seat. Unlike some of her recent books, Brown does not reveal who the kidnapper is until the very end. There are several suspects and she keeps you guessing. I have to rate Hello Darkness as one of the best stories I've read this year.

"Hello, darkness" is Sandra Brown at her best and she is truely one of the premier writers of romantic suspense. This is a story of past mistakes, unintentional betrayal, haunting suspense and heated romance that leaves the reader breathless and eager for more.

Unable to get past her contribution to the lingering death of her ex fiance, Paris Gibson escapes to the darkness of the night. She is the enigmatic host of a popular late night radio program featuring soft talk and love songs. This is both her sanctuary and her only link to the world she has avoided for the past seven years. Then she receives a phone call from a deranged fan warning Paris that he has kidnapped a young woman who after Paris' on air advice has betrayed his love and trust. He offers Paris and the authorities seventy two hours to rescue the girl before he kills her and then comes for Paris.

Paris is joined by the Austin police and their newly hired psychologist Dean Malloy in a frantic search for the psychopath and his young victim. Malloy and Paris share a history rife with attraction and distrust. They must try to put their attraction and their differences aside while they investigate the many suspects in the race to save a life.

Brown weaves various strands of suspense within a sordid tale of confused youngsters from dysfunctional families who risk their lives to seek quick highs from drugs and sex with strangers they've met on unregulated websites. It is a frightening subject that is deftly and realistically handled. The characters are so capably sculpted that you hate to leave them when the story ends. I am never disappointed by Sandra Brown's books, but this one really is a stand out!

I don't care for some of Sandra Brown's books. But those have always been the ones written 20 or so years ago and that's because ideals etc. have changed so much since then.

I've waited anxiously for this new book and it was definitely not worth the wait.

1. The characters were flat and boring.
2. The coincidences were way out of control. Brad, Janey, Paris, Dean, Gavin, etc. The possibilty of all of them being connected in the same murder, ending up in the same city and having the amount of previous connections-unlikely at best.
3. What was with Paris and the sunglasses? She was sensitive to light but that sure changed in the end.
4. There was no chemistry between Paris and Dean.
5. What gave Paris the right to decide Dean couldn't see Jack? Considering Dean had known him a lot longer than she had Dean was more likely to know what Jack would want. Also they were both equally responsible for what had happened so why should she punish Jack.
6. I figured out who the murderer was as soon as he appeared in the book.
7. Paris was unlikeable and had about as much depth as a piece of paper.

I am an avid Sandra Brown fan and I can only hope her next book is a whole lot better.
I can however recommend French Silk, The Crush, Charade.

Heard the taped version of Sandra Brown's latest thriller, HELLO,
DARKNESS . . . this one is about the host of a late night radio show
who has a listener who may or may not kill her next.

I'm a big fan of Brown's other works, but that said, found this to
be disappointing . . . it was as if I've read this book before (or
at least seen movies with a similar theme), and so the plot had
very little suspense.

There were also too many secondary characters to my liking.

Lastly, Brown attempted a twist ending, but that too did little
for me.

I hate to keep doing this. I panned The Standoff because it was really bad, but I thought it was an anomaly. I may have been wrong about that. While Hello, Darkness is definitely a step in a better direction, it is still not up to Sandra Brown's previous standards.

I have usually been able to relate to the main female character in Ms. Brown's books, but Paris Gibson remains an unsympathetic, self-absorbed, affected, one-dimensional woman I cannot care about no matter which way I look at her. Ms. Brown doesn't do much to help us flesh her out, when the deepest insights we get into her character are descriptions of her various facial expressions.

I was disappointed by the author's use of a method employed by less experienced writers who think the way to mystify the reader and keep them wondering "who done it" is to introduce a whole cast of potential perps, each with his own complete matched set of disturbing childhood baggage, and then play a sort of shell game with the characters - is it this one, how about this one, or is it this one. We jump from inside the head of sexually dysfunctional suspect number one, to the thoughts of porno addict number two, to the subconscious of female abuser number three, to the mind of incest victim number four, to the suspicious behavior of teenage boy number five - did I miss anyone. This certainly saves the author from having to employ her craft and cleverly weave in clues for the reader to follow. But it leaves us as spectators, not participants, as we wait for her to stop the game and lift the final shell.

The "Play Misty For Me" plot could have worked (Paris actually plays Misty on her radio show, maybe a nod to the original) but every chance for nail-biting suspense is missed with plot derailments. There is a considerable investment of time made in developing interest in, if not sympathy for Janey Kemp, a modern-day Lolita with her own Sex Club, trashy website, and sicko lover, and whose life is on the line as a 72-hour countdown toward murder begins. Then, just when the suspense begins to accelerate and we reach for our seat-belts, Janey is removed from the picture, almost casually. The whole effect is as anti-climactic as running out of gas on the home stretch of the Indy 500. After that, the book never really recovers from a deadly case of trite.

So, here I am again, on the one hand feeling guilty for saying I really hated it, and on the other hand feeling ticked off because I spent full cover price on the hardback. Still love ya, Sandra, but before you publish the next one, get a few people to critique it who are not relatives or friends or business associates.

In this book by Sandra Brown, Paris Gibson is host of a late night radio program where she plays music and talks to listeners, sometimes giving them advice. As the book opens, Paris receives a phone call from someone calling himself "Valentino", saying he has kidnapped his girlfriend and will kill her within 72 hours. Paris goes to the police and runs into an old flame, Dr. Dean Malloy. Paris and Dean struggle with the past as well as their feelings for each other, while trying to find Valentino before he kills his girlfriend.

This is another exciting thriller by Sandra Brown. She is expert at giving just enough information that makes you keep turning the pages to find out more. There are plenty of suspects who could be Valentino and his identity is not revealed until the exciting climax of the book. I highly recommend this book, but don't start it too late at night or you may find yourself staying up all night to finish it!

This was my first Sandra Brown book, and I'm hooked! One of the best suspense novels in a long time! A real page turner!

This is one of the best thrillers I've read. Paris Gibson is witty, charming, and has the exact amount of neediness to come across as a very interesting woman, without being your typical damsel in distress. Once you start to follow the plot of the murders, you can not put the book down, and eagerly expect what comes next. The book shows in-depth research, well-planned plot and characters that have a life of their own. This one is a keeper.

Sandra Brown has done the next to the impossible. She's given us a serial killer, shown us what he looks like, given us plenty of info about him, made plenty sure we know he's a bottom dweller into not quite right, kinky sex. But that's not what is so amazing about this novel. We meet this slug right from the get go, but we don't figure out who he is till the end of the book, so I guess you could say HELLO, DARKNESS is a mystery. But wait, it reads like a pulse-pounding, page-turning thriller. Stop! There might be a touch of romance in it as well.

Nightshift DJ Paris Gibson gets a call from one of her listeners, a guy who calls himself Valentino, just before she goes off shift. He tells her he's kidnapped his girlfriend and he's going to kill her in three days. Paris has seventy-two hours to save the girl. Of course she goes straight to the cops, where she happens to run into Criminal Shrink Dean Malloy, a man from her past.

Paris, Malloy and the police do their level best to track the kidnapper, but Ms. Brown has made it a bit difficult by giving them more than one suspect. Is it Malloy's sassy son, a back-talking, boozing brat who belongs to the same internet sex club as the missing girl? Is it the perverted porno perusing, pedophiliac who yearns to peak under his patient's skirts as he's drilling their teeth? Is it the cop assigned to computer fraud that's been secretly sampling the wares of the girls in the high school sex club? And can Paris and company catch the kidnapping killer before he gets Paris, because you know he's after her, else why did he bother to call in the first place.

The beauty of this book is that I was convinced the bad guy was the dentist, then I shifted my attention to the kid, then the cop, then back to the dentist, and so on and so on. Ms. Brown gives us three suspects, makes them all look guilty, then guiltier. What a great book.

The premise wasn't bad, but the writing was. Nothing gelled as it should: The hero/heroine, Dean and Paris, had no chemistry, it was obvious from the first what had happened between them in the past, and the drawn out way it was presented only tortured the reader. And Dean? Too smooth, too even, always ready to do the shrink thing, he had no guilt, and I'm forced to wonder if he had emotion at all. His 'anger' in certain scenes was forced and unbelievable.

Not recommended.