Blood Ties (Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Series #12) » (Unabridged, 9 CDs, 10 hrs. 20 min.)

KAY HOOPER is the award-winning author of Sleeping with Fear, Stealing Shadows, and more than ten other novels of suspense and intrigue along with dozens of other books. She lives in North Carolina.

The elite Special Crimes Unit, the FBI’s most controversial and effective team, is a group of mavericks and misfits trained to use their unique psychic abilities to hunt the worst monsters imaginable human ones. Led by the enigmatic Noah Bishop, the SCU team has earned a reputation for pitting their skills and cunning against killers that other cops fear. But this time Bishop and his agents face an enemy who has them in his sights, a trained sniper with a deadly plan — and more than one ace up his sleeve.

It starts with an unspeakable series of grisly murders across three states, a trail of blood leading, finally, to the small Tennessee town of Serenade. There, two more brutal murders lure the SCU into what may be the ultimate trap.

One of the first investigators on the scene, Special Agent Hollis Templeton is willing to push herself as hard and as far as necessary. Risking more than her life to help and protect her fellow SCU members, Hollis is coping with psychic abilities that are evolving in unprecedented ways, an attraction to the most complex man she’s ever known, and a serial murder investigation that has just turned very, very personal.

In her time with the SCU, Hollis has shown an uncanny ability to survive even the most deadly attacks. But what she doesn’t count on is that this killer intends to destroy the team from within.

The clock is ticking. The body count is rising. And as Bishop and his agents race to uncover the identity of their true enemy, not even their special senses can warn them just how bloody, and how terrifyingly close, the truth will be.

Publishers Weekly

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. (Feb.)