Rating: 
Summary: And the Sinner is ......
Review: My friend, Sue, has been recommending Tami Hoag for years and I recently picked up "Night Sins".Let me say, my environment and that in the novel could hardly be more different. In Australia, January is mid-summer, and Adelaide has just endured two January heatwaves (the average temperature for January was 101 degrees, up to 112 one day!) and we have just entered our third heatwave of the summer. And there I was, reading a story set in the Minnesotan winter month of January, with a windchill factor of minus 62 degrees. I cannot imagine such cold! We start whining when the thermometer drops to the (plus) 60's! I found this novel impossible to put down. I don't know why, because when put under my reviewing microscope, I found plenty of things to criticise. "Night Sins" is a bodice ripper, disguised as a thriller - the crime is just incidental to the "romance". Megan's bodice starts heaving and Mitch's pants start getting too tight (well, they would have, had he been wearing some) the moment they lock eyes. How professional is that? For someone with all her rules, she got her knickers off pretty quickly, not that she had much of a chance with Mitch's unrelenting persistence. They spend so much of the novel having little spats and then making up, the other characters are justified in their derision (if not in the way they go about it). I was not surprised to find Ms Hoag started out as a romance writer. She hasn't moved on - had Mitch been an 18th century pirate or highwayman and Megan a damsel, the sex would have been the same. This book almost needs a plain, brown wrapper! Or Fabio in an unzipped parka on the cover (not the unexplained empty sneaker on the copy I read) - at least that would have issued some sort of warning about the contents. Okay, being a woman in the male bastion of law enforcement is difficult, frustrating, etc. After being told that every ten or so pages, I think we get it. Why do all these lead characters (and that includes the parents) have to be dysfunctional? Oh, for just one normal, well-adjusted human being with scruples - none here, I'm afraid. Maybe Natalie, but her part was really small. For someone who had a migraine, the beginnings of one, or the aftermath of one, during the entire story, Megan and her medicine cabinet purse managed to rise through the ranks of the BCA pretty sensationally. The last thing I'd expect anyone to want during a migraine is sex, even with a Harrison Ford look-alike (right down to the scar on the chin - puh-leese). After all Ms Hoag's casting advice, I'm wondering who they got to play the role in the mini-series - not Ford, I'm guessing. Metaphors are useful literary devices. That does not mean every sentence needs one. Many of them were quite clever, but the sheer number of them had me groaning. How long would a TV reporter like Paige Price, or a Sheriff like Steiger, last in the real world? Don't both professions have codes of conduct, and people they report to? They were SO ridiculously, laughably bad. Somehow, it was practically impossible to have any sympathy for the parents of the abducted boy. The father was such a rat, and the mother such a saint, I just wanted to bang their heads together. And when the mother's bodice started heaving for the priest, and his trousers started swelling, well ... you know where this is going. The best (and worst) part of this book is the weather - best because it's well written and so extreme (to me, anyway) as to be interesting, and worst, because without it, the novel would mercifully have been at least 200 pages shorter. After 540 pages, you still have no idea of why the baddie did it, who he's in league with, where the kid was, what happened to him, or anything. Oh yeah, you find out at the "end" that this is a two-parter and you're expected to wade through another 500 pages or so of clichés, metaphors, stereotyped characters and steamy sex to find out. And all the copies of "Guilty as Sin" at my libraries (I'm not buying this rubbish!) are out on loan - dammit!
Rating: 
Summary: Say What?
Review: I stayed with this book for the pay-off. I wanted, like most readers of crime fiction, to see the bad guy get got, the good guy get the girl. So far so good. But when I turned the final pages, Hoag lost me, probably for good. I won't spoil it for you, but the ending is a pretty big disappointment. Even Hoag's attempt to placate the reader with a post-Epilogue epilogue didn't mitigate my displeasure, and may have even reinforced it with an obvious attempt to get me to buy the sequel to find answers to questions this book should have answered for me. I liked the pace, I liked the characters, I liked the writing. But the ending was pure cop-out (no pun intended), and left lots of loose ends dangling in the breeze.
Rating: 
Summary: Ashes To Ashes
Review: I enjoy all mystery books. Tami Hoag's book Ashes To Ashes keeps the reader in supense. I think it has a suprise twist at the end. My neighbor and I trade off books we like. She and I usually can figure out the bad guys. We didn't guess this one. I have to go get the book Dust to Dust.
Rating:
Summary: I loved this book!
Review: Honestly, at the beginning, I didn't like it. I read the first few pages and I thought: How stupid! It's about kids playing hockey. BORING! But it got really good after some terrrible things happened cause one person was late. There was a totally unexpected outcome and I couldn't put this down! Buy it and you will enjoy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Writing, the fifth star would be for a finished story.
Review: Night Sins is the first Tami Hoag book I have read. I truly enjoyed her power of description...the heat between Holt and O'Malley was palpable. The story makes you aware of all the secrets that go on behind walls guarded by neighborly faces...even in a small town. The ONLY THING I didn't like about the book is the way it left me hanging. It should be called "Night Sins Part I". I was expecting resolution of some kind...answers to at least three or four of the questions that left me feeling incomplete. I'm not mad that I have to go on to finish the story by reading "Guilty As Sin", I just would have liked a little warning...as I carried NS around the house reading every chance I could I was expecting that each page I flipped I was nearer answers to nagging questions...but few came. I'm not mad, but I felt a little betrayed. I'm just glad that I CAN find answers (hopefully) in GAS...I'm almost afraid to try to read it, worried it will raise more questions than it answers. I guess I'll go over to the "Guilty As Sin" review section to find out. Blessings!
Rating:
Summary: Loved it! Can't wait for the next one..
Review: I decided to try another author, usually reading Anne Rule or James Patterson, and I am so happy that I did! Tami Hoag, is amazing! I could hardly put Night Sins down..everywhere I went I would hope for a quiet moment to continue this exciting book. I am so excited to go out and purchase her next book.. Guilty as Sin. I will let you all know how great that one was as well, I am sure. Thanks Tami for writing such fantastic imagery in your books!
Rating:
Summary: Tami Hoag's best book!
Review: this was the first book by Tami Hoag that I had ever read and it totally hooked me into the mystery genre. Since I have read this book (and it's sequel GUILTY AS SIN, which was not nearly as enthralling) I have come to the opinion that this is the least trite of all he work. The love story between Chief Holt and Agent O'Malley doesn't seem corny and the story is solid and doesn't have any holes. I love this book, it's a good book to read on the beach. thanx.
Rating:
Summary: A little light reading, despite the subject matter
Review: Tami Hoag made her living writing romance novels before she switched her focus, and it shows in "Night Sins". Raise your hand if you knew Megan and Mitch would end up sleeping together! Her descriptions are romance novel stock-in-trade, and the plot was predictable. Hoag's strength, however, is in her dialogue--she knows what she's doing there, and that's what kept me reading. Romance readers looking for a step up can start with Tami Hoag--a nice beach or plane read.
Rating:
Summary: A Little Long Winded
Review: Tami Hoag is very adept at creating atmosphere in her books. This one has many interesting characters. The chemistry between Megan O'Malley and Chief Mitch Holt works well. There are a few too many cutesy cliches. "...a pair of bushy eyebrows that should have had their own zip code". This story lags in places and could have benefited from more editing. Still, a fairly enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: It was her first book I've ever read, I was hooked.
Review: I couldn't put it down from the first page. I am very impressed, the suspense was excellent! Guilty As Sin finishes the story line, which is wonderful because you can't wait to find out more. She's up there with P. Cornwell. I love the mixture of everything in her books!
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