Blood Ties: A Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Novel

I have been reading Kay Hooper from the beginning of the Bishop Special Crimes Unit (SCU) series and thoroughly enjoyed this installment. It included all of the elements I expect from Kay Hooper including suspense, character development, action, and of course the psychic element.

This is not a good book for someone who has not read at least a few of the previous books in the Bishop SCU series. The characters are familiar to those of us who are avid fans, but it would take too much time for Hooper to introduce new readers to each of these complex characters. In addition to lack of familiarity with the characters, new readers may struggle to completely understand the storyline. Blood Ties is the third installment of a trilogy with a specific storyline.

If you must make this your first Kay Hooper book, do yourself a favor and visit Kay Hooper's website or look in the back of the book for the character bios. By familiarizing yourself at least a little with the recurring characters, you will be able to understand the storyline better and be more likely to enjoy the book.

FBI's elite Special Crimes Unit "SCU" returns for another unusual investigation. Just outside Serenade, Tennessee, the butchered remains of a man have been found. Nearby are the remains of a female. Though the male was obviously meant to be found quickly, it seems as if the female was never meant to be discovered. The SCU Team sets up a temporary base in the small town's only B&B and goes to work.

Special Investigator Diana Brisco is still new to the SCU Team. Her father believed Diana to be mentally ill, instead of gifted with psychic abilities. Therefore, Diana's abilities were dampened for most of her life by medications. But now Diana brings some unique talents to the team. Diana is the only known medium able to breech the door between life and death to speak with spirit guides. Diana calls this between-space the Gray Time because everything is colorless. But the longer Diana's spirit remains in the Gray Time, the less chance she has to return to her living body.

When an unknown sniper begins adding to the body count and the psychic abilities of several team members seem to be altering, the team must face the possibility that the evil they face may not be human. In fact, the events are somehow linked to several past SCU cases. Diana's ability to walk in Gray Time may be the team's only hope of learning the answers they so desperately need.

**** FOUR STARS! This heart stopping trip into the Special Crimes Unit is as intense as its predecessors. Since this investigation is linked to many past cases and involves numerous team members, readers will find occasional footnotes informing them of which title the information being discussed is from. The author has gone the extra mile for her readers by adding a section in the back of the book detailing character bios, a list of their psychic abilities, and their SCU definitions. This is especially helpful if you have missed a title or two of this series.

Several team members get a lot of time in the story's spotlight; however, I believe Diana spends the most time there. Traveling in Gray Time has got to be one of the most interesting talents I have read about within the series. Kay Hooper writes stories that make it difficult for me to breathe. ****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Blood Ties
Kay Hooper

This was my first Kay Hooper book and I wasn't into the beginning at all, to the point that I almost stopped reading the book. I felt the beginning was very rushed and there was not enough character buildup. Once I read about 10-15% of the book I started to enjoy the story line and some of characters. (After reading the book I see that they were other books so this might be why I felt rushed... since the stories were already developed in another book.)

I liked the abilities the characters had and Samuel's deviousness was well written.

I will have to look into the prior books and see if I will read them... After I might have a better understanding and perception of Blood Ties (the last book of series)

This is somewhat of a murder thriller, but crosses the border into Sci Fi. I do not recommend this book, though the basic story line is somewhat intriguing, with the Special Crimes Unit under attack from a sniper.

But much of the book is given over to a confused metaphysic that detracts and wanders. The author attempts to weave an intrigue of wonder and mystery with an atmosphere of psychic drama, exploring unseen evil powers puppeteering the perpetrators of the crimes.

Some readers will be intrigued, as I was at first, with the inclusion of a medium (two actually) and other psychic skills among the elite special task force here. They actually travel into another dimension while conversing with the dead or spirit guides, in a mish-mash of several different other-world formats that don't seem to mesh well.

Hooper seems to have drawn on several different metaphysical constructs for other-world existence ad communication, but did not consistently implement nay of them. It got confusing and unbelievable.

The story founders on its preachment of a metaphysical universe of afterlife evil. Maybe. It is hard to tell what the theme of this is. A love story of sorts is included but it seems the author could not decide what she really wanted to the story to be. It drug on and on.

Hooper is billed as best-selling author. I wonder who buys her books? Maybe this is not representative of her whole line. I was glad I could check this one out of the library and did not spend my own money for it.

The vocal performance by Joyce Bean was read well enough, but the voices and vocal characterizations of the characters were not believable.

A capable author of a continuing series should be able to write books that a new reader could pickup and enjoy and maybe even like it enough to go back and read the series from the start. Never going to happen with Blood Ties. If fact I've read this series and I couldn't even follow the plot, nor did I want to. And I can't decide if asterixing the action to refer back to previous books was arrogant or just plain lazy. Probably a little of both. In any case, I gave up and quit halfway through. Too many other good books to read to waste time on this dreadful, confusing sotry.

I was very pleased when I finished this latest thriller by Kay Hooper. I was so disappointed by her last book, "Blood Sins." While this book continues with some of the plot points, it seem much more thought out.

A dizzying array of past characters are included in this book, even more so than in the past, and it's fun to see familiar names pop up and try to place them. It did start to get a little confusing...but still fun.

Several exciting plot twists though I feel like some of them needed to be flushed out just a bit. But overall, a solid entry to this guilty pleasure of a series!

Looking forward to the next trilogy...

In her twelfth edition to the Bishop/Special Crimes Unit series, Kay Hooper continues to mesmerize readers with explosive conflicts and gripping characters. Bishop's well-trained unit of misfits work frantically to stop the escalating body count in "Blood Ties", as an unknown assailant targets the SCU and ultimately takes a small town hostage through fear.

Fans will be captivated--at every turn--as much loved players from previous volumes arrive on scene to pitch in using their unique and extraordinary abilities. As the team searches for answers, Hooper's astonishing talent for creating and juggling circling storylines--from past and present--is put to the test. I don't believe she could fail if she tried. Her creative blend of the paranormal and suspense are truly distinctive and with ingenious settings, "Blood Ties" will undoubtedly be a success.

[...]

Near Serenade, Tennessee, the remains of a butchered man and woman are found. The FBI Special Crimes Unit (SCU) led by Bishop and including his wife Miranda is sent to investigate. The unit moves into a nearby B&B, and quickly concludes that the male was meant for immediate finding while the female was not.

Meanwhile a sniper begins killing people and something is interfering with the special skills of the SCU team. Unsure of Hollis Templeton's rapidly changing paranormal skills since Touching Evil. and he does not want to use Special Investigator Diana Brisco as the Lodge incident is thirty crow miles away (see Chill of Fears). However, Bishop has no choice. The only hope SCU has to stop what they increasingly believe is an inhuman evil is Diana using her unique psychic ability that enables her to walk in what she calls the void of color Gray Time to communicate with spirit guides. However she must be careful how long her spirit remains in Gray Time as too long means never returning to her body; an adversary plans to strand her there.

This is an exciting Special Crimes Unit police procedural in which several team members play key roles including others not mentioned above. A glossary after the novel provides a who's who of SCU and their skills and appearances; this helps keep track as twelve members participate as do the Haven Operatives (bios also in the back). The story line is fast-paced from the moment local Pageant County Sheriff sexagenarian Duncan tells Miranda that neither he nor his department has ever seen let alone handle a case like this one and never takes a stuttering step from there. Fans of SCU will relish the twelfth SCU investigation as someone or something has brought the team to Tennessee to destroy them physically and spiritually.

Harriet Klausner

Although I wish I'd read the reviews BEFORE buying Blood Ties, I used to LOVE Kay Hooper and probably would have purchased it anyway. Even if I had been able to read this in one sitting cover-to-cover, I would still have found it annoyingly confusing. It seems she brought in every character that ever appeared in the Bishop series. WHY? In this book, they were just NAMES, not people. I found the asterisks referencing her prior books cheesy. I'm not even convinced Kay Hooper wrote this!

If you've never read Kay Hooper before, DON'T read this one. Go back to her earlier books and read those - they were wonderfully suspenseful, can't-wait-to-get-my-hands-on-another-book-by-this-author quality. This one is WRETCHED compared to her earlier books. This belongs in the Kay Hooper Hall of Shame. As a previously AVID fan, I feel "dissed".

I could not get through this book. I actually dozed off a few times. The entire first 120 pages (about as far as I got) were dedicated to very detailed, complex explanations of paranormal experiences, spirits,"gray time" and mediums getting dragged into and pulled out of this gray time...blah, blah, blah. Continuous references to other, earlier books that I had not read, further confused me. I kept waiting for the story to get back to the murder case and it just didn't happen. I even started skipping over 3 or 4 pages at a time to no avail. Hopefully, eventually, the murder investigation continued and was solved, but I could not get interested enough in this book to care what happened and never finished it.

good stuff first. this was very thrilling and suspenseful. Miranda Bishop and a team of psychics from the SCU are investigating two mysterious murders. A killer is almost taunting them in a game of cat and mouse. Kay Hooper does a great job of weaving a story that will hold a readers interest. There are plenty of familiar faces and its great to watch the team work as a unit to put the pieces together.

now my cons. I started reading this series because I've followed Hooper from her Loveswept days. She'a a great romance author and watching each lead find their match under Miranda and Noah's eye has been fun. BUT how many of us have been following Hollis Templeton? Hollis with her tragic story and determination to live in the present and future while not letting her past drag her down. Even if her past is the reason that she has psychic skills developing out the wazoo. I have been eagerly waiting for Hollis to meet her love and watch the journey with the man that would have to be pretty darn special to be with her. Reese is that man. With an unusual skill of his own, he was perfect for Hollis. The only thing is they only share two kisses. Reese admits his feelings for her or at least his interest in seeing where they could go together and then the story focuses back on the murder. Again the story was GOOD but I was a bit disappointed that I was robbed of the opportunity to get a birds eye view of watching this amazing woman fall in love. Honestly I needed to see it so I can breath a sigh of relief that she had the HEA that she definitely deserves. Of course that was my only little pout session and I didnt let that effect my rating on this excellent story.

Samuel is dead and finished in BLOOD SINS, but this isn't true with the Special Crimes unit. The dead can strike from the grave.
Two brutal murder lead Noah Bishop and his staff of psychic investigators into a deadly trap from which they may not survive. Hollis Templeton is willing to take the risks necessary to find the killer, but as her abilities change and evolve will she have the strength to win against a demon adversary?
BLOOD TIES brings many threads together in this outstanding psychic series.
Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS.

The author has made her most recent books needlessly complicated. In this latest book she introduces new characters willy nilly, never develops many of them and as a result needlessly complicates things. Too frequently she resorts to the paranormal to escape from a poorly managed sequence of events. She has to resort to referencing previous novels to explain away things or characters and this adds nothing but more confusion.
Don't waste your time with this book, it is not up the standard of her earlier SCU books

Good read. Engaging characters and plot. Best read in sequence. Hope she keeps writing more in this series. Might want t o check out the cast of characters at the back of the book before you start reading .

Like the other reviewers, I love Kay Hooper's books. This one, however, was very confusing. She had too many characters and no main characters to focus on. I'd like to see her return to the earlier books where an SCU character assists someone who's new to his/her paranormal abilities, and they track down a killer. This book was too formulaic and slow for me.

I was ok with this series until this one. Really, he's still not dead? I'm afraid Kay Hooper is listening to publishers who want another hook to sell another book and not to the readers. She's getting predictable, formulated and is cranking them out like Danielle Steele. Yuk. I'm done. She needs to slow down, develop her characters better and add some mystery to her mysteries. Could anyone not figure out who the bad guy was?

I absolutely loved this book. When I bought this book I had never read a Kay hooper book, but finished it in 2 days, I was a lil confused with all the flashbacks due to the fact that I hadnt read her previous Bishop series books, needless to say I am working myself backwards and am working on the evil series now. I love the Bishop/scu books and very much hopes she writes another soon!