Product Description

Bernadette Saint Clare is an FBI agent with a difference: she has an unerring but uncanny knack for apprehending killers. Her ability makes her a dangerous maverick in the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Her reward is a backwater posting to Minnesota, but on her very first day a mutilated body is found: the killing is the work of a vigilante killer intent on settling old scores. Soon more bodies appear up and down the Mississippi. All are evildoers who have preyed on the innocent. Forensic investigation is too slow for the dizzying sequence of events that now take place. Bernadette is catapulted from the heart-stopping sequence of slayings into a chase where stalker and prey swap places and where she will be taken to the very brink of sanity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #398796 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

From the Publisher
'High-octane US debut in the Karin Slaughter and Kathy Reichs tradition' Bookseller

From the Inside Flap
Bernadette Saint Clare is an FBI agent with a difference: she sees through the eyes of killers… but her ability makes her a dangerous maverick in the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Her reward is a backwater posting to Minnesota, but on her very first day a mutilated body is found: the killing is the work of a vigilante killer intent on settling old scores. Soon more bodies appear up and down the Mississippi. All are evildoers who have preyed on the innocent -- the murderer is literally interpreting the Old Testament’s injunction, ‘a life for a life’. He will take as many as he can and quickly as he can before he can be stopped.

Forensic investigation is too slow for the dizzying sequence of events that now take place. Bernadette is catapulted from the heart-stopping sequence of slayings into a chase where stalker and prey swap places and where her visions will take her to the very brink of sanity

From the Back Cover
Bernadette Saint Clare is an FBI agent with a difference: she sees through the eyes of killers. but her ability makes her a dangerous maverick in the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Her reward is a backwater posting to Minnesota, but on her very first day a mutilated body is found: the killing is the work of a vigilante killer intent on settling old scores. Soon more bodies appear up and down the Mississippi. All are evildoers who have preyed on the innocent.

Forensic investigation is too slow for the dizzying sequence of events that now take place. Bernadette is catapulted from the heart-stopping sequence of slayings into a chase where stalker and prey swap places and where her visions will take her to the very brink of sanity.

;Terri Persons gives us everything you'd want in a great thriller - riveting detail, frenetic pacing, a terrifying killer - and a savvy lady cop who brings it all together. Persons is a great new voice in crime fiction.' Linda Fairstein

'In a story thick with suspense, plot twists and supernatural chills, Persons has shattered the thriller mold' John Sandford

'A terrific debut - in every sense' Gilda O'Neill

Customer Reviews

An interesting debut
Terri Persons has created a highly likeable and readable lead character with Bernadette Saint Clare, who, after the death of her twin sister, has developed a special skill which helps her track down killer while working for the FBI. That skill is being able to see through the eyes of the killer, to get in the mind of the killer to help hunt them down. Her co-workers are somewhat sceptical of her talent and so, she has been posted to Minnesota and dumped in a basement office by herself.
As I said Saint Clare is a great character, she's witty and likeable and has an interesting history that is slightly covered in this book but I'm sure will make great reading as the series progresses.
However the reason I'm only awarding this book 3 stars is because I feel the story was lacking. The killer can be seen a mile off and some parts are slightly hard to believe and therefore ruin the story. That said, I will most definately continue with this series as I'm sure this series will improve as Persons starts to get more comfortable and familiar with her characters and writing the genre.
I'd definately recomend this book if you're looking for something a bit different from the crime genre. As although this is definately first and foremost a crime book it also has a hint of the supernatural thanks to Agent Saint Clares special abilities.
This is definately a series to keep an eye on.

Turn a blind eye
FBI Agent Bernadette St Clare has an unusual ability to see into the eyes of killers (among other people) which while not 100% reliable does help her to track down the perps when no-one else has a clue what to do. In this tale, based in Minnesota, from her first day she is involved in the hunt for a vigilante-type serial killer who likes to chop off the targets' right hands. The dead bodies belong to people who were once abusers of the innocent, so one by one they are being eliminated.

There's no doubt that the supernatural element of this story is the one and only thing that makes it stand out. If that had been removed, it would have been an utterly forgettable piece of crime-fiction hokum. So yes, it makes it interesting, but even that interest starts to wane eventually and by that time I found it rather tiresome to read. The important qualities that, for me, were missing throughout were good quality prose and writing style, together with an enigmatic central character that I could really care about. The only thing that interested me about Agent St Clare was her strange talents that enable her to see what killers see in real-time, in other words as they are actually happening. In theory this suggests a strong potential for a thriller label, but in practice thrill levels were low.

The greatness weakness for me though was the writing style, or should I say the near complete absence of any. It's just words. It's quite a talky novel but in most of the conversations, all the characters sound the same. A skilled writer can create individual personality in a conversation such that the reader instinctively knows that the dialogue is of two or three different people, be they male or female, old or young, shy or arrogant and so on. But Terri Persons, at least on the evidence of this debut novel, does not have such an ability and has a long way to go if she aspires to become a big-selling crime fiction writer, and as this is also the beginning of a series, she is in danger of becoming a one-trick pony with this psychic/medium aspect. It's not bad, but I would suggest that anyone interested in it has a look in the local library first. In these credit-crunched times we must be ever more selective with our spending on novels such as this, and this is one that just cannot be considered worthy of comparison with any of the really good crime fiction novels I have read this year. If you like the genre with a supernatural twist, work your way through John Connolly's back catalogue. If you like a decent FBI-associated tale, try THE POET by Michael Connelly. If you fancy a police procedural with a feisty female lead, consider some of Tess Gerritsen's earlier work such as THE SURGEON or THE APPRENTICE, while another highly regarded female writer of crime fiction is Mo Hayder - sample BIRDMAN or THE TREATMENT. These novels are all worthy of your precious cash; BLIND SPOT would be a risk for those familiar with the genre and accustomed to good characterisation and high quality writing.

excellant first book
Excellent first crime novel , in the genre of Patricia Cornwell Karin Slaughter etc.
Interesting twist on the psychic ability/in tuition of the heroine.
Looking forward to the next book.