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HELLO, DARKNESS
by Sandra Brown
Simon & Schuster , October 2003
404 pages
$25.95
ISBN: 0743245520


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Popular radio personality, Paris Gibson, enjoyed working the late night hours for her station in Austin, Texas. She was able to hide herself from the world and none of her many listeners knew she was once a top television reporter in Houston. The perfect insulated world she created for herself came to an end when one of her long-time listeners, Valentino, called just before she was about to sign off for the night. He said he was angry with her because, on the air, she advised his girlfriend to break up with him. Valentino said that he was going to torture, sexually abuse, and then kill his girlfriend over the next 72 hours and then he was going to get Paris.

Against the wishes of her station manager, who thought it was a prank, Paris went to the police department to tell them about the phone call. With some investigation, the police found a teenage sex club website and made the connection from Valentino to the missing promiscuous daughter of a local judge.

Paris finds herself in the middle of the investigation along with police psychologist, Dean Malloy, a man she knew, and had a history with, when she was a television reporter in Houston. Dean had been the best friend of her fiancé, Jack, who had been in a coma for the past seven years and had recently died.

HELLO, DARKNESS by Sandra Brown takes the readers into the radio industry, the police sex crimes unit, a teen age Internet sex club, and into the mind of sex offenders from all walks of life. Even with all this going on, I found the book long and tedious. Ms. Brown tries to fill her newest novel with mystery and romance but somehow the mixture simply doesnıt work. Simple and basic information is withheld from the readers and Ms. Brown constantly teases us about whatıs to come, even when the answers are unimportant. Because of this I found myself wanting to skim through the pages and not particularly engaged in the investigation and not caring about what happens to the characters in the story.

We know that Parisıs fiancé, Jack, dies after being in a coma but it takes forever to find out what happened to put him in that condition. We know that police psychologist, Dean Malloy, was Jackıs best friend but there is so much over-melodramatic angst and tension between Paris and Dean that we donıt know whatıs going on until hundreds of pages into the book. Do they love each other? Donıt they love each other? What happened to them in the past that keeps them apart now? After a while of this, I just didnıt care.

And talking about not being concerned about characters, the kidnapped teenage daughter of the judge was about as unlikable as they come. The last thing I cared about was whether she would live through the kidnapping and torture. In fact, I felt the same way about all the people in this book. When you donıt care if the police solve the case, any mystery falls flat.

Ms. Brown gives us a long list of who Valentino might be. Is it the radio stationıs engineer, the radio stationıs maintenance man, is it the dentist, is it one of the kidnapped girlıs friends, is it Dean Malloyıs son, or is it any or all of the people who listen to Parisıs show nightly. And did I care if Dean and Paris eventually got together to cement their budding love affair? Nope.

Even though I didnıt care much for HELLO, DARKNESS Iım sure that it will be another big seller for Ms. Brown. If youıre a fan of mystery and romance genre mixtures and a fan of Ms. Brown I would definitely suggest you read this book. If you care about well defined mysteries, tense investigations and characters who bring you into their world and make you concerned and fascinated about what happens to them, HELLO, DARKNESS is not for you. I would leave this book on the shelf for someone else to read.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, October 2003

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