Terri Persons - Blind Sight

A deer hunter tracking his wounded prey through the Minnesota woods gets much more than he bargained for when he makes the grisly discovery of a young girl's bod. The condition of the corpse is shocking:
The girl had been pregnant, but the fetus has been removed from her womb and an inverted pentagram drawn on her forehead.
After the girl is identified as the daughter of a high-powered senator, the FBI is called in to find the murderer - and the missing baby.

The case becomes increasingly complex as Bernadette and Tony's personal relationship heats up, and the investigation is hampered by the many lies that lead them on an circuitous - and deadly- route to the truth.
Through dogged police work and Bernadette's unique powers of second sight, they close in on the killers on a frigid night in snowy woods in an effort to save the tiny victim of the toughest crime they've ever had to solve.

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The corpse of a young, runaway girl is found by a deer hunter. Lydia Dunton was the daughter of U. S. senator Magnus Dunton, her pregnant womb was sliced open to remove the baby she carried and on her forehead the killer left an inverted pentagram.
Bernadette Saint Clare and her supervisor and partner Anthony Garcia are pressured to solve the case asap and get the smallest victim back alive but where to begin ?

When evidence is tampered with, a suspect is killed and a whole town keeps silent about a possible satanic cult or a witches coven the investigators have to find other ways. One leads Bernadette to an old case that happened many years before in a town not far away and a town where Lydia Dunton was shortly before she was killed.
Recovering Lydia's backpack and using Bernadette's special ability, the investigators are able to bring a little light into the case, a light that puts her own parents into the spotlight.

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Blind Sight is the third novel in a series featuring Bernadette Saint Clare and Anthony Garcia and as the two previous novels, Blind Spot and Blind Rage it keeps what it promises. Like before Bernadette's sight is mostly irrelevant but gives her hunches and the killer's surroundings that come in handy. With a not too overpowering romantic relationship deepening in this novel it offers the typical whodunit FBI procedure with very likeable characters and and introduction to a new character I got the feeling we will meet again.

Rating:

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (May 26, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385526539
ISBN-13: 978-0385526531

Terri Persons - Blind Rage

A string of troubled young women committing suicide is haunting the Twin Cities - but FBI Agent Bernadette Saint Clare has a hunch that these women didn't die by their own hand...

It's a big leap to take, and Bernadette's going to need some serious evidence to back it up. Unfortunately, her best lead is an uncooperative psychiatrist, and when Saint Clare resorts to using her second sight, she'll discover dark secrets in the doctor's past as complex as they are disgusting.

With a cast of characters including a partner who's no longer among the living and a handsome boss who's available, this is the most unique psychological thriller you're bound to read all year.

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In this second novel featuring FBI Agent Bernadette Saint Clare and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Garcia, the investigators are determined to solve the death of six young, troubled girls who presumably killed themselves through drowning. When the seventh girl is found drowned in her bathtub and filled with Lithium prescribed by her psychiatrist they feel the drownings that have occurred lately can't be a coincidence.

A vague description of the possible killer and the few leads they are following end in a blind alley with their subjects hiding behind their lawyers without any real reason.
There is young, handsome professor Wakefielder giving literature classes and seems to take advantage of his female students.
The psychiatrist Luke VanHalder isn't helpful either with not releasing the involved girls files.
Bernadette gets hunches of all of them but can't quite figure out more due to her sight. The pressure on Bernadette and Garcia rises when professor Wakefielder calls to let them know that one of his students is missing and Bernadette's sight tells her that the killer has already captured his next victim. They don't know yet the depth of the cobweb and all it's angles they are sitting in but will soon discover nothing is as it seems and past and present are ultimately connected together and shocking.

Bernadette's connection to this killer is intense and when he cuts himself with a razor she discovers the depth of her connection with her own blood dripping from her face. Facing the killer could mean to shoot herself if she tries to shoot him in self defense.

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Bernadette's character doesn't seem to have developed much more compared to the first novel but plotwise the author certainly did. It was interesting that the crimes weren't exactly solved due to Bernadette's sight but more to her combination of the facts. She seems a bit brisk and certainly would have been more successful in her investigations without threatening each and every subject on her list.
A great addition and not at all a surprise is her dead college, Ruben Creed, who helped during her investigations.

Exciting and a good read !


Rating:

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (May 20, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385518757
ISBN-13: 978-0385518758

Terri Persons - Blind Spot

FBI Agent Bernadette Saint Clare's gift of second sight allows her to see things others can't. But some things are better left unseen...

The FBI has never know quite what to do with Agent Bernadette Saint Clare.
Not always easy to work with, she's been assigned and reassigned to FBI offices all over he country.
Shortly after she's placed at a desk in the basement of he off-site St. Paul office, bodies begin to appear along the sandy banks of the Mississippi. Soon she's called on to do what she does best: use the personal effects found at a crime scene to see through a killer's eyes.

In some cases her sight has been astoundingly accurate; in others, the results have been less than perfect. The agent in charge of this case, Tony Garcia, aware of Bernadette's spotty record, is unsure if he should follow her lead, and the tension between them makes for an uneasy alliance.

Complicating matters still further, Bernadette becomes involved with her new upstairs neighbor. She allows him into her life despite her reservations -- there's something about him she can't quite put her finger on, especially when he offers her a key clue to the killer's identity.

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Terri Persons introduces a new character to the mystery genre:
Special Agent Bernadette St. Clare, to most co-workers uncomfortable. With her two different colored eyes she's got an ability that makes people around her uncomfortable.
Often her ability to see through a killer's eyes helped her to solve high-profile cases but also there were times where she was totally wrong with her sights. Her ability drains her, her sight is often cloudy and flimsy and almost always leaves her with the killer's emotions - good or evil.
She's got the huge package of seeing her own twin sister's death in an car accident on her shoulders. She saw her die through the drunken drivers eyes who caused the accident.
After her husband hanged himself after 13 years of marriage she pretty much kept to herself and now, once again, got transferred to another town:

Cut off hands are found on the sandy shores of the Mississippi river. Not far away the rest of the dead bodies is found, neatly tied up with a fisherman's knot. It soon is discovered that the bodies were alive when the right hands where chopped off and thrown away.

Bernadette and her new friendly, but vary of her abilities, new boss Tony Garcia are working the case and Bernadette directly tries to sense something about the murderer. She sees him reaching with his hands to a sick women in a hospital bed. Her first lead brings her to the local hospital but it is the right lead ? Can she trust what she saw ? Is the killer a doctor, a male nurse ?

And then there is August, her new neighbor from above, who seems to know so much about her and the affections between them seem to be so much deeper than the usual one night stands Bernadette had for a while.

Meanwhile the killer gets a new "assignment" and is on his verge to his next victim but killing this men seems to be the biggest mistake he's ever done.

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At first I thought I had, once again, grabbed a book with an agent with special abilities but there is something unique about the way Bernadette's and Garcia's relationship and their characters develop during the book.
From the beginning there seems to be a bit of a curiosity on both sites which is also overshadowed by disbelieve in the others trust. Terri Persons introduced Bernadette in a way like you've met her on the streets and you're getting to know her and her flaws which makes her and Tony Garcia very well memorable characters. Actually they both have a funny way to talk to each other which gave the book the notch to be so good. Not only because they are the *beeping* FBI. ;-)

The ending was plausible and so much surprising and suspenseful ! Finally Bernadette discovers who August is and meets her co-worker agent Creed ... . :-)

The second book in this new, inspiring novel is going to be published under the name Blind Rage on May, 20th. Enjoy !

Rating:
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Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (March 13, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385518692
ISBN-13: 978-0385518697