Blood Ties by Kay Hooper

Review by Alexius White

Kay Hooper’s novels are not the genre that I normally read. However, a friend suggested I read Blood Ties. I didn’t ready believe that I would like the novel mainly because the novel was classified as romance suspense thrillers. I don’t read romance of any kind. It’s not my genre. However, I decide to read it anyway and to my surprise I liked Blood Ties.

Blood Ties is the twelfth novel in the Bishop Special Crimes Unit Series. Yet, it is the third novel in the Blood Trilogy. Hooper likes to have the novels in groups of three. Blood Dreams and Blood Sins are the first two novels in the Blood Trilogy. Blood Ties picks up only a few months after Blood Sins ends. At the end of Blood Sins the Church of the Everlasting Sin has been destroyed and the leader has been killed. The leader’s pet monster is in a mental hospital “screaming at the walls” (as the novel puts it).

Blood Ties spans only a few days. The novel takes places in the small town of Serenade, Tennessee. The town reminded me a lot of my home town. Everyone knows everyone else and nothing big happens there until the Friday night football game. It is a normal small town. However, this small town gets turned on its head when a high school track star, out for a morning run in the woods, discovers a murder body. Call in the small town police who are out of their depth. They call in the FBI who sends over the Special Crimes Unit (SCU). The important thing to note here is that everyone in the SCU has a special psychic ability. There are not werewolves, vampires, plant people or lamias. They are human beings with psychic powers, and that is cool too. Another thing to note is the reason the SCU is interested in the case. One, it takes places over a few miles from where the Church of the Everlasting Sin was. Two, they have already found other bodies similar to this one.

As I said earlier this is my first time reading anything in the series; in spite of not having read anything in the Bishop Special Crimes Unit Series before, I did not have a problem following the story line. However, I would not suggest starting with this novel because it is the very last in the series. I should have done some research before I started it. If I had I would have started with Blood Dreams. My favorite parts of the novel would have to be the psychic abilities. I love special effects. Love them. The most interesting of the psychics is Diana Brisco, who is new to the team. She is a medium. She has the ability to go to a place called the “gray time.” It is completely void of everything. It is a hollow cold place with no color nor depth nor time at all. The second interesting psychic is Galen. From what the novel explained he is not really a psychic but has a unique ability to stay alive. He is like the watchdog or guardian; he knows when danger is coming. A funny thing with him is that he takes orders from people not because it is his job and he has to but because he chooses to. It’s weird you have to read it to understand it.

At the beginning of the novel, I thought that the murder victims were all the work of just one crazy person. When you get to the end of the novel and you realize what was really happening from day one with the first murder victim, it makes you want to go back and read all the other novels in the series. You want to because somewhere along the line you missed a big piece of the puzzle. And it makes me think that Kay Hooper might be a little bit crapper then a low man in a yellow coat. You have to read it to understand.

Over all I like the novel and will go back to read the others in the series. The whole romance thing didn’t come in until the very end of the novel. By then I wanted to read someone tell someone else I love you. There is a lot going on in Blood Ties. In the end I give it four stars.