Customer Reviews

Sense of Evil

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Special Agent Isabel Adams of the FBI's Special Crimes Unit, the elite unit made up of psychic agents, is assigned to investigate a series of horrific murders in Hastings, SC. Isabel is a top notch profiler and clairvoyant. Her partner, Hollis Templeton, is a medium. Together with local Police Chief, Rafe Sullivan, they pool their skills and resources, paranormal and otherwise, to catch the serial killer menacing the town - a killer who epitomizes evil.

Obviously Agent Adams is beautiful, blonde, sexy, smart, savvy, a martial arts expert, sharpshooter and an excellent investigator. Police Chief Sullivan isn't bad on the eyes either. Yes. Sparks fly...with paranormal results.

I like Kay Hooper's psychic series. However, my favorites are "Out Of The Shadows," featuring Noah Bishop who heads the Special Crimes Unit, and Sheriff Miranda Knight, and "Stealing Shadows." "Sense of Evil" held my interest and is a good light read, if somewhat gruesome. However, it doesn't hold up to the high standards Ms. Hooper set in the above mentioned novels. The characters here are less developed, not as complex, and the story is somewhat formulaic. The mystery is a good one, however. I sure couldn't figure out whodunit!
JANA

While her Shadows trilogy did not need to be read in order to understand (I started with Bishop and Miranda's story, which is still my favorite), her Evil trilogy should be. There are recurring characters that are more fun to revisit if you've read about them before. As for this book, I couldn't put it down. Ms. Hooper has such a way about leaving you hanging to where you MUST continue. Most of her books have a very touching romantic element to the story, which is probably my second favorite aspect of the novels (the first, of course, being that they're all psychically inclined). Sense of Evil, however, was missing that, which was why I gave it 4 stars. I hope Ms. Hooper will return to adding a bit more romance to her characters--it's one of the things that makes them 3-dimensional and so very loveable! But that aside, Isabel and Rafe's story is a great one that should be read and enjoyed! I just hate the fact that I have to wait for the next one!

Hooper's books continue to be marred by lapses in logic and research. From the book where the woman woke up from a months long coma with long manicured nails to the one where an inexperience forensics team estimated height and weight of a murder victim from a box of bone fragments, I've often found myself being jerked out of the story by some easily checked error. While I had hoped for rather better because this was her hardcover debut, I was doomed to disappointment again.

While I can suspend belief to accept the psychic part, its the mundane details she misses that gets me.

I see someone has already commented about Hooper's off the wall view of schizophrenia, but what about the FBI agent who had checked all the pharmacies within a hundred miles and no one was taking "schizophrenia medicine"? Because there is no specific medication for schizophrenia and the medications used in its treatment are often prescribed for other mental illness, I could only assume, all other evidence of rampant alcoholism, sado sexual murder and family violence aside, Hastings, South Carolina is the mental health capital of the United States.

Then there is the FBI agent in tight jeans with a calf holster. No matter how good their tush looks, no one who depends on a gun to save their life is going to use a calf holster exclusively. Sheesh, how do you get to it standing up?

I'm not even going to talk about her lack of knowledge about how bodies decay, especially in late spring in South Carolina locked in with rats and certainly not impervious to flies. Read Death's Acre by William M. Bass if you want to know more.

All in all, I think that Hooper needs a fact checker and an editor who is willing to call her on these lapses. She also failed to engage my interest with the characterization. If the reader was new to the series I have no idea how they would have been able to figure out who was who with the introduction of so many characters from the early series.

A serial killer is on the loose. The victims are always blond, successful women. A FBI special unit compromised of psychic profilers and agents gets involved. Special Agent Isabel Adams is the physic profiler that is showcased in this book. She also happens to be blond and on the killers list of potential victims.

Kay Hooper often writes books with a touch of the paranormal. In fact there are six books in this series involving the same FBI Special Unit. They have all been pretty good if you don't mind the somewhat convenient device of "visions" being used to solve crimes. This book is the weakest of the six in the series. It relies very heavily on the psychic experience. The book gets bogged down in all the psychic detail. It got to be a little too much when main characters would touch and they literally would spark. The book was suspenseful at times and the killer did turn out to be a surprise. It's not a bad read, but Hooper has done better in the past

This is the first time I have read a Hooper novel. I haven't yet finished the book, only half way through. BUT, being a physician, one of my biggest pet peeves is the misconception that Schizophrenia and Multiple Personality Disorder(MPD) are the same. There were many instances in the book when the author was quite confused(almost as confused as the killer). MPD is a very rare disease and much controversy with regards to the diagnosis by many psychiatrists. Nonetheless, the author should have spent just as much time reading up on KNOWN psychiatric disorders as she did on professed "psychic abilities" and reiterating it throughout her book in a dogmatic fashion.

I have enjoyed Ms. Hooper's work in the past but Sense of Evil read as a textbook on psychics and abnormal psychology couched in conversations. Most of the conversations were between two people who were supposed to be attracted to each other but, while they sparked when touching in the book, there was no spark for this reader. I found the main characters shallow and Rafe's abilities unexplained other than her had a psychic grandmother. The action manifested itself in gory descriptions of disemboweled bodies but the police spent most of their time sitting in the station house looking at papers . . and talking (did I mention all the talking?).

I don't require physical romance in a mystery or a detailed mystery in a romance story. Unfortunately this book missed both targets - the mystery is not tantalizing and the romance and sex are non-existant. So, why read the book? I kept thinking something would happen and I did want to know the killer, which was a good denoument but predictable by the last third of the book. So 2 stars since I did feel compelled to finish it - but her earlier series involved the reader much more.

Who in the world wrote this book!!?? It certainly couldn't have been Kay Hooper. She does such a fantastic job on her plots and stories that there is no putting the book down once you get started. This book, however, was a real struggle to get through. I buy too many books to waste money on a hard back that should have been either a paperback or sent to the trash. The characters had no emoton, and as far as I could tell, there was not much of a relationship building between the main characters except the electric spark that happened when they touched. There was a whole lot of psychic babble that could have been left out.

If this is your first Kay Hooper book,please don't give up on her. She has many, many other books that are fantastic.

I love the previous books in the Bishop series, but could barely get through this one. The character development was very poorly done and characters that I have no idea why they were even introduced or what they had to do with the story. I mainly got fed up with all the psychic detail that went on and on. This felt like a short story that the author tried to stretch into a full length book. Very disappointing.

I have read every book Kay Hooper has written and every book I have loved!! This one however, was very disappointing. If I wanted to know how the mind of a psychic works I would have bought a book on the subject. That was all this book was about. One murdered girl. Two dead bodies. Oh what a disappointment this book was. Save your money. Wait till it comes to the library. Hope her next one lives up to her usual standards as the best in Suspense.

This is the worst Kay Hooper book I have ever read. I have read all of her psychic/serial killer books and they were great. I don't know if she was having a bad time with this one or what, but I could have done a much better job! This book had so much potential for a kick ass book and it fizzled out before it even got started. If this is your first Kay Hooper book, give her another try with "Sense of Evil" or "Out of the Shadow" series. Those were fine writing skills. If you simply must be read it, try and find a used copy and don't waste your $$ on a new copy!