Night Sins by Tami Hoag

One error in judgment...that’s all it takes for a family’s life to be torn apart. Dr. Hannah Garrison is on her way out the hospital door to pick up her son, Josh, when an emergency car accident prompts her to be late. An hour and a half later, when she finally arrives at the ice rink to retrieve her son, he’s no where to be found. It soon becomes apparent that this is more than a missing child case. Something much more sinister is at work...a psychopath, delighting in an evil game, taunts police, steering them in a myriad of directions where everyone in this peaceful Minnesota town is a potential suspect. Is it the maintenance man from the ice rink, Olie Swain, who unbeknownst to anyone is a convicted pedophile? Or perhaps it’s the overly zealous deacon, whose piety has led him into his own maddening world. Or maybe it’s even Josh’s own father, Paul Kirkwood, who is having an affair with the neighbor’s wife.

In an unlucky turn of events, it falls upon the hands of Agent Megan O’Malley to sort out the twisted details of the case. Being the first female investigator on the force, she’s got everything to prove and no one who believes she’s competent, except for Chief Mitch Holt. Working under such intimate circumstances, Megan and Mitch soon become romantically involved, a secret that could destroy both of their careers. Not to mention the fact that Chief Holt is still battling the demons of a tragedy in his own family. Is he too close to the case to perform his job? Will Megan’s overwhelming drive to succeed put her own life in danger?

Night Sins has enough twists and turns to keep you riveted from cover to cover of its 540 pages. Just when you think you’ve got everything figured out, Tami Hoag unveils a new, juicy tidbit that’s sure to have you second guessing. There is a sequel to this novel, entitled Guilty as Sin. So, don’t expect ALL the details to be tied up into a tidy package at the end. If, however, you love to be left guessing, Night Sins is definitely for you.




I really liked this book, but wish I had read it before Guilty As Sin. The books have a definite order and I read them backwards :(. I started reading this one and was very confused because I thought I had read it before... all of the details and story line were familiar. That's because Guilty as Sin had all of the final conclusions to this book. Oh well, if you're going to read them be sure to read Night Sins first than Guilty as Sin. Quick read.

Guilty as Sin by Tami Hoag

Although the publisher is curiously silent about this important detail, Tami Hoag’s thriller picks up the action where her previous novel, NIGHT SINS (1995), concluded. In the earlier story, rural Deer Lake, Minnesota, was shattered by the abduction of eight-year-old Josh Kirkwood. The first suspect, a known child-molester, committed suicide before he could be questioned about where the boy was hidden. During the continuing investigation, state investigator Megan O’Malley was captured, blind-folded, and nearly beaten to death by a ski-masked assailant. She was saved by the timely intervention of Deer Lake Sheriff Mitch Holt, who gave chase and shortly arrested a suspect—college professor Garrett Wright, a neighbor of the Kirkwood family. As NIGHT SINS concluded, Wright was protesting his innocence and Josh Kirkwood had suddenly returned home unharmed, but unable to say where he had been or what happened to him.

In GUILTY AS SIN, the focus shifts to Assistant County Attorney Ellen North, who is prosecuting the case against Garrett Wright. Beyond the sheriff’s statement that Wright is the man he pursued from the building where Megan O’Malley was being beaten, there is no physical evidence to connect Wright to either O’Malley’s assault or Josh Kirkwood’s kidnapping.

Two additional developments make Ellen North’s job more difficult: Her boss has granted best-selling true-crime writer Jay Butler Brooks full access to the investigation, and Garrett Wright’s high-powered defense attorney is Ellen’s ex-lover—the man who betrayed her trust and cost her an earlier case. To make matters worse, while Ellen is developing her case against the incarcerated Wright, another eight-year-old boy is kidnapped and then murdered in a neighboring town. Ellen starts to receive anonymous telephone calls taunting her that she is part of a game she does not understand and suggesting that her own life is in danger.

While GUILTY AS SIN contains enough chills and puzzles to satisfy the average fan of this genre, the real impact of the story is seriously diminished for anyone who has not read NIGHT SINS.



Great book. It brought to mind someone that sticks to their gut feelings as everyone else is jumping ship. Trying to prove it is a whole other story. The book was kind of slow in the middle with you just wanting something to happen, but then near the end it starts to explode and you can't get enough.

Deeper Than The Dead by Tami Hoag

When three children stumble on a shallow grave in 1984, an idyllic California community is rocked to its core. The victim is a young woman, her eyes and lips sealed closed, a blind and silent witness to an unspeakable crime. The third victim in two years’ time, it’s clear that a serial killer has come calling.

As a member of the FBI’s fledgling criminal profiling unit, Special Agent Tony Mendez knows serial killers. It quickly becomes apparent that the See-No-Evil killer is no ordinary psychopath. The profile paints a portrait of a man easily trusted, well respected, and intelligent—a man no one would suspect.

Dr. Peter Crane fits the bill. A pillar of the community, he volunteers at a center for disadvantaged women—a center the victims had all attended. Crane is also a beloved husband and father to a ten-year-old son, Tommy, who was one of the three children to discover the grave. Needing insight into Peter Crane’s world, Mendez asks Anne Navarre, Tommy’s fifth-grade teacher, to find out what she can. It’s a request Anne finds both intriguing and unethical—much like Mendez himself.

Then a new victim leads to a different suspect—a man whose son was another of the three children to find the grave but a man whose position in the community is also above reproach, a sheriff’s deputy. As the connections between the two families become increasingly tangled, it seems clear that one of these children holds the key to a serial killer’s double life . . . and a revelation of evil so dark, so deep, no one may survive.


I was grabbing every spare moment to finish this book!! I'd be so tired my eyes were drifting closed on me over and over, but I just couldn't put the book down. Very good book that lead you in many different directions. Can you imagine being held by a psychopath that stops his victims cold by making them deaf blind and mute. Unthinkable horror is all I can think of... You won't want to read this book while home alone.