Total Silence

Rating:
Summary: a frame story
Review: I enjoy the characters of Shep and Mira, but this novel was really about the Curry family. It felt as if Shep and Mira were just a frame story in which the Curry family could be portrayed. I never felt that the motivations of the different Curry family members were sufficiently explained. A prison escape is a significant part of the plot, but a reason for it is not given. A significant character is murdered, skinned actually, but that murder and the reason for it is never explained. This novel left me with a lot of questions.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly captivating book
Review: I needed something to read on a recent airplane trip, and picked this up randomly. Within 30 minutes, I was hooked. This was a well written and suspenseful book that I thought really pulls the reader into the story. The author does a fantastic job letting you in the minds of the characters so that you know not just what they're doing but why they're doing it. The only reason that this received four stars rather than five is that the ending is somewhat lacking. It was very rushed and abrupt, which was a dramatic difference from the rest of the book, which was well paced and captivating.

Rating:
Summary: fantastic supernatural thriller
Review: She tells fortunes for a living but Mira Morales is a true psychic as is her mother and her daughter Annie. Mother and daughter are vacationing in Asheville, North Carolina with Mira's fiancé FBI Agent Shep. Mira has a cold that stuffs up her psychic senses, which leaves her helpless when a woman carrying a gun kidnaps her and shoots at her when she tries to get away. The killer, Allie Curry, also killed five people who were on the property and could have identified her.

When Shep and Anne come home, they find the dead bodies in the barn and Mira nowhere to be found. Shep immediately realizes that someone kidnapped Mira to get back at him because as a law official he made many enemies. Allie, a doctor by profession, treats Mira because she wants her healthy so she can kill her on a certain day, the one year anniversary of her brother's death. She believes this is payback for Shep arresting her brother years ago.

Readers who like supernatural thrillers that are absolutely fantastic will want to read TOTAL SILENCE, a work that has Dean's ghost aiding Mira in her quest to survive his sister's deadly plan. Good old fashioned detective work, Annie and her grandmother's psychic powers and a friendly ghost are all part of the investigation in which Shep is not too proud to use all the help he can get. T.J. MacGregor has written an outstanding work starring characters that were featured in THE HANGED MAN and BLACK WATER.

Harriet Klausner