His Wicked Sins [Mass Market Paperback]

Eve Silver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2008

In the quiet hamlet of Yorkshire, the hallowed halls of Burndale School stand...and evil lurks in its dark corners. For a serial killer with a proclivity for blonde women has struck again - this time, murdering two of its teachers. Now everyone is wondering when the killer will seek his next victim...Elizabeth Canham has accepted a teaching position at the local boarding school in Yorkshire. But her quiet life takes a surprising turn when she meets Griffin Fairfax - the handsome father of one of her pupils. His mesmerizing stare quickly draws her in, and she can't deny the fierce attraction between them...Griffin Fairfax appears to be a doting father and gentleman. But one disturbing truth lies at the heart of the murders - all of the victims were intimately connected to him. When Elizabeth discovers this, she wonders if it's a mere coincidence or if Griffin could be a charming, seductive killer so many women have lost their hearts - and lives - to...

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Zebra Books (August 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821781294
• ISBN-13: 978-0821781296
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #830,033 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

National bestselling author Eve Silver has been praised for her "edgy, steamy, action-packed" books, darkly sexy heroes and take-charge heroines. Her work has garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, plus two RT Book Reviews Reviewers' Choice Awards, and in 2007 she received Library Journal's Best Genre Fiction Award. The first book in Eve's Otherkin/Sins series, Sins of the Heart, was recently nominated for the Romance Writers of America® RITA® Award.

Eve lives with her husband, two sons, an energetic Airedale terrier, an exuberant border collie/shepherd and an enormous rabbit. Visit Eve at her website www.EveSilver.net

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nicely woven mystery, romance is a little lacking, October 27, 2008

By 

Melissa (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: His Wicked Sins (Mass Market Paperback)

I liked this book but will not read it again. It has all the ingredients of a good gothic novel, a lonely man, haunted heroine and a mysterious villain, but it also had some macabre scenes and Ms. Silver describes some of the crimes with a little too much detail.

This book takes place actually in two time periods. The first is a murder scene at an inn. Three dead bodies are discovered and the investigator is appalled at the horrendousness of the crimes.

The novel then forwards ten years to Beth Canham who is taking a job as a teacher in a girl's school in the English countryside. Her family is destitute and she knows this job will help with the family coffers. She meets Griffin Fairfax when she arrives and she is captivated by him.

Griffin has a daughter, Isobel, who attends the school and she does not speak. She is a troubled girl and Beth has an affinity for her because she suffers from her own phobias, she is claustrophobic and afraid of the dark.

Before Beth arrived two teachers with blond hair were brutally murdered within the last two years. Beth has blond hair and even more disturbing another blond young woman is missing from the area.

Griffin is suspect in these deaths because he discovered the bodies of the two teachers in the woods and villagers whisper that he killed his wife. Griffin warns Beth away but she is irresistibly drawn to him even though she can feel that someone is watching her.

Interspersed throughout this story is the ten year old murders at the Inn. The investigator is dumbfounded as to the identity of the murderer but the reader can ascertain that the same man is responsible for all the killings at the school and the Inn.

Ms Silver also goes into the demented mind of the killer without revealing his identity until the very end. She does an excellent job of exposing his twisted thoughts. The fear of one of his victims is palpable and I actually skimmed through that portion.

The romance here is okay but the mystery is better. I don't know if the leads spent enough time together to convince me they were really that much in love. They keep to themselves speculating about their past. They are interesting people but needed more time to develop their relationship.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jane Eyre-Similar and More, November 23, 2009

By 

Toni V. Sweeney (Orange County, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: His Wicked Sins (Mass Market Paperback)

This romance is a cut above the average star-crossed lovers story, a thriller of a mystery with a large dose of Jane Eyre tossed in. A beautiful teacher at an 19th-century girls' school, a mysterious widower, his mute daughter, and a murderer who is killing women with long blonde hair, are the ingredients for a story which will keep you guessing until the last moment.

In order to support her impoverished family, Elizabeth Canham forges credentials to obtain a position at Burndale School in the Yorkshires. Her first day there, she meets Griffin Fairfax, father of Isobel, a solitary, odd little girl who becomes one of her pupils. She also learns that Griffin is a widower and that many people believe he murdered his wife and Isobel is mute because she was a witness. A little unnerved by the sudden attraction to Griffin and the unladylike thoughts she finds herself having concerning him, she doesn't know that he is also attracted to her but because of his background and the onus of his wife's death, feels he's unworthy to declare himself. Griffin is newly-returned to his family home, having been disinherited by his father because of the lewd and uncontrollable behaviour of his youth. Once on his own, he continued in that path, womanizing, fighting duels, partnering with a known criminal to keep body and soul together. When his father dies without changing his will, he returns to become master of the place from which he was so dramatically sent away, marries well and has a daughter, only to have his reputation once more in doubt when his wife dies tragically.

Woven into Griffin and Beth's love story is the tale of a murder which occurred fifteen years before, of how it affected a young man who had just become a part of the local constabulary, and the belief that the killer struck several times afterward. Somehow, Beth is involved, for she suffers claustrophobia, has night terrors and dreams of blood and death. The discovery that the teacher she was hired to replace was brutally murdered and another several years before and both were blondes does nothing to calm her already disturbed state. When she discovers Griffin lurking outside the walls of the school at night, she doesn't know if he's watching over her or stalking her. She also isn't sure if the shadowy figure she sees in the hallways and in the forest surrounding the school is Griffin or someone more sinister.

The attraction between Griffin and Beth is beautiful described. Griffin's fears and doubts because of his previous life of crime play against the love he's allowing himself to feel for Beth while she, innocent but not ignorant, is eager to discover the extent of the physical sensation she feel in his presence. He plays on this, taking advantage of stolen moments in the headmistress' office when he visits his daughter, asking Beth to be Isobel's chaperone when the child returns home for visits, inevitably seducing her during one of those visits, and keeping her with him afterward. Surprisingly, no one disagrees or complains, implying that because he is one of the benefactors of the school and if a man who gives them money wants to make a mistress of one of their teachers, they will look the other way. That is not what Griffin wants, however, because he loves Beth. She becomes a salvation to both child and father, and Griffin isn't about to let the unknown danger stalking Burndale School steal away this new chance at happiness. She's better off with him than at the school. And all the while, the police are closing in, and the killer draws nearer, and the finger of suspicion point at Griffin. Then Griffin discovers that he and Beth have a past, a relationship of which neither was aware, and it stretches back to the first murder fifteen years before.

The drawing together of all the clues and the story lines, the explanations of guilt-appearing behaviour, what really happened to Griffin's wife, Isobel's slow recovery due to Beth's care, and the cause for Beth's own terrors are gradually revealed in a satisfactory and climactic way. The identity of the killer is a surprise and a bit of a shock, but the ending, is satisfactory all around.

If you want a gripping story of shadowed houses, mysterious strangers and murder alongside a sensuous love story, with a likable heroine and a handsome, tormented hero, His Wicked Sins is the book to read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovin' Me Some Mystery Romance!, February 25, 2009

By 

VampFanGirl (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: His Wicked Sins (Mass Market Paperback)

Miss Elizabeth Canham is a fraud but a fraud with a righteous cause. She is a woman shaped by terror and tragedy that has left her riddled with phobias of the dark and the tightness of enclosed spaces. Yet despite the bleakness of her past and the subsequent character flaws, Beth is strong. The livelihood of her family rests upon her shoulders and that burden doesn't go unnoticed as Beth makes her way from London to Yorkshire for Burndale Academy and the young female charges it houses. The position as a teacher awaits her, a position she isn't the least bit qualified for but one that she is determined to secure and retain.

Dark and foreboding, Burdale Academy rests amidst a dark forest and is guarded by three gnarled and long dead trees. As winter looms on the horizon and the wind blows cold, it carries with it the whisperings of death, death so gruesome that it couldn't possibly be real. But the dark manse has known death. Two teachers have died by what was ruled a ravaging by beasts. As clues to the ultimate riddle are revealed, Beth suspects, but can't fully believe, that the beautiful and dark Griffin Fairfax is to blame.

Rumor swirls around Griffin but he cares not for what they say. He knows he's a monster and he doesn't need others to confirm his thoughts. When Beth enters his life with her moon lit ringlets and sky blue eyes, the monster within him howls. His attraction and yearning for her holds no bounds and he hopes to scare her, to drive her back by using the very ugliness that surrounds him. Yet his anger is ignited as well his desire when Beth shows no hope of turning away from him in fear or otherwise. As a man born to privilege then cast into poverty, he has done his worst to survive. When fate renders him the last surviving member of his family, Griffin finds himself once again to be the possessor of a great fortune. But his worst deeds were still yet to come.

Beth can no more stop her heart from fluttering or the tingles of desire from spreading than she can stop the wind and it's Griffin Fairfax that ignites her deepest yearnings. Beth is no fool to think that any man would want to marry a woman with her anxious tendencies that may be passed along to his children and with that knowledge comes the fact that she'll never know a man's intimate touch. Yet her desire for Griffin has grown to such proportions that she's accepted the fact that she will know him with every physical inch of her body and damn the consequences.

Although Griffin has tried his best to scare Beth away from him and the darkness that resides in his soul, Beth's resounding thought in his presence is safety. When she observes him with his frail daughter, she witnesses the shining love for another within his eyes and with it the tragic loss of faith. Griffin's daughter, Isobel, fell mute over three years ago after witnessing the death of her mother by his very hands. A girl with eyes wise beyond her years, she floats through the halls of Burndale Academy with only the slightest hint of awareness yet it's Beth who slowly awakens her from her stupor. It's Beth who finally takes an interest in his daughter. Who speaks to her as though she is really amongst the living and that Isobel too has a soul; one worth saving. It's this that endears Beth to Griffin.

Meanwhile, in the midst of Griffin's and Beth's lingering looks and stolen kisses, a stalker awaits the perfect time to strike. Although Beth feels the hungry eyes of a killer upon her, she dare not voice her concern. She can't prove that she's being watched, nor can she prove that someone has been in her room and touched her belongings. Her position at Burdale Academy is far too important to jeopardize and perhaps all that she is feeling and seeing are figments of her terror filled imagination.

Yet Beth's fears are realized after stumbling upon the body of another victim. Given sanctuary at Griffin's home while being questioned by local authorities, an overheard conversation unlocks the doors of the past within Beth's mind. As renewed terror oozes thick in her veins, she flees the saftely of Griffin's arms and straight into a killers.

Eve Silver paints the most eerie pictures with her words. She manages to create a bleak landscape rife with darkness and fear yet her words never become tedious or over descriptive. My mind was lost in Burndale Academy and it's evil secrets and I liked journeying through it all with Beth and her bravery. Ms. Silver even managed to dupe me with the identity of the killer. I thought I had it all figured out but she managed to creatively surprise me.

Beth was a very strong and extremely intelligent woman. The fact that she overcame near death and faces her terror daily is a testament to her abundant strength. I liked her thought process and how she gave everyone the benefit of the doubt before drawing her final conclusions of them. I also loved her unwavering belief that Griffin was a good man and not the monster he deluded himself into believing.

Lastly, I loved how Beth's past was revealed to the reader. Interwoven in the present are numerous flashbacks. Not specifically Beth's flashbacks but rather a sub story within 'His Wicked Sins' explaining not only the beginnings of serial murderer but how Beth's terror came to be and also what inspired her bravery.