Deeper than the Dead Book

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.

Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Hoag (Kill the Messenger) ventures into serial killer territory with results sure to please her many fans, though unresolved plot threads, both intentional and inadvertent, may put off veteran readers of the genre. One fall day in 1985 in Oak Knoll, Calif., fifth-grader Tommy Crane and his sidekick, Wendy Morgan, are fleeing the class bully, Dennis Farman, through a local park when Tommy stumbles over the head of a dead woman buried up to her neck. Two hours from Los Angeles, Oak Knoll is not the sort of town where major crime is a problem, but a serial killer is on the loose who's already murdered and tortured several women and has another on deck in his secret lair. Fifth-grade teacher Anne Navarre, who counsels Tommy and Wendy, is soon at the center of the investigation being led by a hunky FBI agent, Vince Leone. This is serial killer lite with Hoag's romance roots dictating both the prose style and the unveiling of the killer. 8-city author tour. (Dec.)