Deeper than the Dead by Tami Hoag

Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Jacket Blurb:
A serial killer terrorizes a small California town in this gripping thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag.

California, 1985—Four children and young teacher Anne Navarre make a gruesome discovery: a partially buried female body, her eyes and mouth glued shut. A serial killer is at large, and the very bonds that hold their idyllic town together are about to be tested to the breaking point.

Tasked with finding the killer, FBI investigator Vince Leone employs a new and controversial FBI technique called "profiling," which plunges him into the lives of the four children—and the young teacher whose need to uncover the truth is as intense as his own.

But as new victims are found and pressure from the media grows, Vince and Anne find themselves circling the same small group of local suspects, unsure if those who suffer most are the victims themselves—or those close to the killer, blissfully unaware that someone very near to them is a murderous psychopath…
 
Read as an audio book.

I have very mixed thoughts on this book. This was predictable, cliched, disturbing, at times slow, and at times engaging and somewhat depressing. As a mystery, it's okay. A small town is shaken too it's roots at the discovery of a killer in their midst. Everyone is trying to hide their secrets as families are being torn apart. As a romance, with our comely heroine and damaged protagonist, I completely bounced off the story line. I don't do "oh woe is me!" female protagonists and we had that in spades.

What? So...is this a mystery or a romance? Exactly... this could go either way.

For myself, the romance completely detracted from the mystery. I skipped the sex scene, I despised the way Vince kept calling Anne, "Honey", and because it was audio, I really didn't care for Vince sounding like he was from Brooklyn or Boston when he was in fact, from Chicago. Our women are supposed to be strong, and yet, we have fainting into someone's arms (twice), we have helplessness, and we have the "oh, you have to sleep with him because your vagina hasn't see action since the Carter Administration!" Really? A woman has to have sex to define her identity? A woman needs a man to feel safe and secure?

Barf.

Okay, mystery. Not much of a mystery because the author tells you in the beginning who it is. Then the reader spends the next 9 hours waiting for confirmation, watching the protagonists struggle to figure it out (they don't have anything to go on), as the affected families become more and more fractured with hints and allegations flying around until the murderer makes a stupid mistake and all is revealed! But...not really.

Without going into spoilers, I found the resolutions (yes, plural) incomplete. There were too many loose ends left waving in the proverbial wind for my tastes and the ending ambiguity was annoying rather than interesting.

Recommended with reservations.



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