SLEEPING WITH FEAR

Author: Kay Hooper ISBN: 0553586009 6/2007 SUSPENSE/PARANORMAL Publisher: BANTAM

Riley Crane woke up fully dressed, a gun under her pillow, and covered in blood. Even more frightening, she didn’t remember what happened the night before. In fact, she barely remembered the previous three weeks. An ex-army officer, now a federal agent assigned to the Special Crimes Unit, Riley was a chameleon—a clairvoyant who could blend in with her surroundings, be anyone or anything she chose to be. The SCU’s expert on the occult, she’d been sent to the beachfront cottage on Opal Island by her enigmatic chief, Noah Bishop, to investigate reports of dangerous occult activity. But that was three weeks ago. Now she’s awoken to discover that she’s got a sexy new man in her life and an unreliable memory, and that the clairvoyant abilities she’s always depended on to protect her are MIA. Worse yet, with SCU resources stretched thinner than ever before, Riley is alone and without backup, feeling her way through a deadly game of blindman’s buff, where no one around her is quite who or what they seem. And a bizarre murder is only the first jarring reminder of how high the stakes really are. Bishop wants Riley off the case. So does powerful local D.A. Ash Prescott. Both her old retired army buddy Gordon Skinner and Sheriff Jake Ballard believe she can catch a vicious killer. But one of these four men knows exactly what’s going on in this coastal community, and that’s knowledge Riley desperately needs. For what Riley can’t remember is more than enough to cost her her life. This time evil isn’t just closer than she thinks–it’s already there.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Since the beginning of the Bishop trilogies, Kay Hooper has become one of my favorite authors. And the only author I'll buy in hardcover. I love Ms. Hooper's writing style, her uniqueness and her mind—an intriguing mind that definitely drifts toward the bizarre. Furthermore, finding her older, out-of-print little romance categories has become almost a hobby.

Well, the Mistress of Macabre is back with a chiller thriller guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. SLEEPING WITH FEAR packs quite a wallop, a creepy, atmospheric, complex tale that grabs a reader's attention from the first page and just will not let go.

While the Bishop trilogies are all listed as suspense, all the stories in these series have romances. SLEEPING WITH FEAR has one of the best romances of the lot. It's almost as if Ms. Hooper reached back into her romance writing beginnings to pull out a love story that worked, loaded with delicious chemistry and divine heat.

Meet Riley Crane, ex-army brat, ex-army officer, current FBI agent, clairvoyant and an expert in the occult. As the story opens, Riley awakens covered in blood, with almost no memory of the past three weeks and no psychic abilities. She also has no memory of Ash Prescott, but while her mind might not recognize Ash, her body does. In spades. Their combustible attraction and wicked, scalding affair add extra spice to SLEEPING WITH FEAR.

Creepy, exciting and engrossing, SLEEPING WITH FEAR is dynamite and a spectacular conclusion to the Fear trilogy.

Debbie Jett