Tommy Crane, Wendy Morgan, Dennis Farman and Cody Roache all are students in Anne Navarre's fifth grade class in a small town in southern California. Dennis is the son of Deputy Sheriff Frank Farman; Tommy, the son of Dr. Peter Crane, dentist; and Wendy is the daughter of Steve Morgan, attorney. Although Cody serves as the bully Dennis's stooge, his parents are not part of this story. The reader quickly gets used to the fact that this novel is essentially told through the children's eyes and the eyes of their teacher..

The story opens after school when Dennis and Cody are bullying Wendy and Tommy and they run through the woods to escape. Tripping, Tommy falls onto a grave, with the marker the head of a female victim. When help arrives it is discovered that her eyes had been glued shut with superglue, her mouth sewn tight, and her hearing destroyed by pierced ear drums. This modus operandi coincides with an unsolved murder still on the books in the Sheriff's office.

One of the deputies had taken a course at the FBI Academy and is familiar with profiling. Recognizing the threat of the dreaded concept of a serial killer, he contacts Vince Leone whom he had met there. Vince had spent the past six months on medical leave from the profiling unit. Having acquired a bullet in his head from a crazed druggie, he is trying to recover with the majority of the slug too close to critical areas to extricate. Although there are an insufficient number of deaths to meet the FBI critical level for profiling, he continues his medical leave in the small California community.

It does not take long to identify the remains, and to their horror they discover another young female missing. Both were graduates of the Center for Abused Women and Vince begins to look for the pattern. Quickly enough, they find the first murdered woman had been to the center, but could not overcome her drug habit and had left. The perpetrator becomes known as the "See No Evil" killer.

Deputy Farman represents the old school opposed to the use of technology and emerging profiling especially since it brings in the FBI. Soon the teacher Anne Navarre begins to realize that he is an abusive father as well and she struggles to become someone with whom Dennis can talk. The narcissistic Janet Crane exists in a super-organized world of committees and structure that do not permit deviations from the schedule, and she views the killing as one of extreme inconvenience since it involves Tommy. Anne struggles with her, soon learning that the woman never becomes just a little upset. Fathers Peter and Steve are both donors of services to the Center and become easier than their wives to deal with in tracing the victims’ last moments.

The novel is very well researched, and the telling of a story switching from the child to the adult's perception is artfully done. Tami Hoag has always been superb at crafting wonderful characters and does so here with distinction. Her dialog and the pacing of this compelling story seem perfect. Soon the suspense escalates to breakneck speed reaching an unusual conclusion. Readers can look forward to a memorable reading experience . Deeper than the Dead is certainly one of the very best novels Tami Hoag has ever written.

--Thea Davis