Shara Faris appeared in the first novel Hungry Eyes as a vigilante who killed five sexual abusers. Characters established in this book and the subsequent one appear in Judas Eyes as well.

Shara avoided paying for these crimes and has embraced a new career in Philadelphia - one that combines the thrill of the hunt that she has come to need without the kill attached. She is a successful bounty hunter and with remarkable ease clears a murder crime exonerating an old nemesis, Lamar Briggs, who becomes her partner in a hunt for a serial murderer.

The first murder is in Atlanta. A police detective is garroted in the front seat of his car near a house that is well known for hosting S & M parties. Soon Mica Swann is identified by the FBI as the killer. Mica has a past not unlike Shara’s and a psychic connection evolves between them. Shara becomes aware of her presence through nightly dreams that terrify her. As Mica flees northward toward her hometown, she kills monthly, always men who were found in situations that suggested the victims were sexual predators.

Relying on the information gleaned from their telepathic connection, Shara stays just behind Mica, as the story wanders through its strong subplots. Hoffman weaves into this gripping thriller almost every imaginable social issue. The most omnipresent is the plight of sexually abused and battered wives and children, and the social service system that often deals awkwardly or negligently with displaced children, all within the context of law versus lawlessness.

He also addresses animalism, personal betrayals, loneliness, and deviant sexual behavior, all within the context of the paranormal. The plot is intriguing, but it is the brilliantly layered characters that carry the book.

Hoffman is a skilled writer whose first novel richly deserved the nomination for the Bram Stoker award. The second in the series was almost purely a psychological thriller. Judas Eyes is an interesting combination of the macabre with the psychological and by far his most complex book.

This is not an easy read, in places it is disturbing. But even for those of us who do not easily or willingly suspend disbelief, it is a memorable book that will be impossible to forget.

--Thea Davis