Hello Darkness Author:Sandra Brown For Paris Gibson, her popular late-night radio show is both an escape and her one real contact with the outside world. — Since moving to Austin to ease the pain of past, tragic mistakes, she has led a life of virtual solitude, coming alive only when she hosts her show. To her loyal listeners, she is a wise and trusted friend who not only takes th... more »eir music requests but listens to their problems and occasionally dispenses advice.
Paris's world of isolation is brutally threatened, however, when one listener -- a man who identifies himself only as "Valentino" -- tells her that her on-air advice to the girl he loves has caused her to leave him and that now he intends to exact his revenge. First he plans to kill the girl, whom he has abducted -- which he says he will do in 72 hours -- then he will come after Paris.
Joined by the Austin police department, Paris plunges into a race against time in an effort to find Valentino before he can carry out his threat to kill -- and to kill again. To her dismay, she finds that one of the people she must work with is crime psychologist Dean Malloy, a man with whom she shares a history that had a catastrophic effect on both their lives. His presence arouses old passions, forcing Paris to confront painful memories that she had come to Austin to forget.
As the clock ticks down, and Valentino's threats come closer and closer to becoming a reality, Paris suddenly finds herself forced to deal with a killer who may not be a stranger at all.« less
This is the type of novel that I love to read from Sandra Brown. The storyline is excellent, the action is wild and the romance is hot!! Readers are snared from the beginning with a sinister phone call to a radio-talk show host, followed by the kidnapping of the daughter of a prominent citizen. And even though you may think you have everything figured out and know who the psycho is - you don't. Not until the very end. The story takes you behind the scenes of a how a radio show operates, as well as into the teenage underworld of sex, drinking and drugs. Although this is truly a work of fiction, I think its a must-read for parents of teenagers because it stresses the importance of communication and keeping close tabs on these young wannabe adults.
Paris Gibson is a radio DJ. One of her listeners blames her for the advice she gave & he lost his girlfriend. He threatens to come after her & does.
The criminal psychologist who comes to her aid is an old flame. The ending will keep you up reading past your bedtime.
I've read a lot of Sandra Brown's books and enjoyed them all, but I think this one is the best!! Kept my interest right from the start and I couldn't guess who the bad guy was until nearly the end. Fun read.
From Publishers Weekly
Cue another run up the charts for bestselling Brown (The Crush), who knows just the right mix to spin: a second-chance-at-love theme rocked by the rhythms of families-in-jeopardy and the hip-hop beat of an at-risk teen subplot sure to alarm the most jaded of parents. Her latest thriller, set during a steamy Austin, Tex., summer, revolves around Paris Gibson, host of a late night radio show that dispenses classic love songs along with advice for the lovelorn that turns deadly after a caller takes Paris's on-air advice to dump a possessive boyfriend who turns out to be another regular caller, "Valentino." Refusing to be dumped, "Valentino" makes the girl his captive, phones Paris that he will kill her in 72 hours ("...her death will be on your conscience") and implies Paris may die next. Paris contacts the Austin police and reunites with one-time lover, Dean Malloy, a police psychologist who was also her dead fiance's best friend. "Valentino" 's victim, Janey Kemp, is the missing 17-year-old daughter of a prominent judge and a founder of a Sex Club Web site that arranges illicit parties that Dean's son, Gavin, also frequents, connecting him to Janey's disappearance. Paris and Dean's romance is almost trivial beside Janey's dehumanizing captivity, although Brown's shallow characterizations of Janey and other Sex Club teens registers the only off note in this fast-reading thriller. The adult suspects are better developed: Lancy, an ex-con/janitor/former porn star trying to make good; Stan, a radio employee whose family connections are the only reason he has a job; John, a cop who sees nothing wrong with "hands on" undercover work; and Brad, a sex-addicted dentist. The unmasking of the killer comes with a riveting finale that will leave fans begging for an encore.
Sandra Brown has done the next to the impossible. She's given us a serial killer, shown us what he looks like, given us plenty of info about him, made plenty sure we know he's a bottom dweller into not quite right, kinky sex. But that's not what is so amazing about this novel. We meet this slug right from the get go, but we don't figure out who he is till the end of the book, so I guess you could say HELLO, DARKNESS is a mystery. But wait, it reads like a pulse-pounding, page-turning thriller. Stop! There might be a touch of romance in it as well.
Nightshift DJ Paris Gibson gets a call from one of her listeners, a guy who calls himself Valentino, just before she goes off shift. He tells her he's kidnapped his girlfriend and he's going to kill her in three days. Paris has seventy-two hours to save the girl. Of course she goes straight to the cops, where she happens to run into Criminal Shrink Dean Malloy, a man from her past.
Paris, Malloy and the police do their level best to track the kidnapper, but Ms. Brown has made it a bit difficult by giving them more than one suspect. Is it Malloy's sassy son, a back-talking, boozing brat who belongs to the same internet sex club as the missing girl? Is it the perverted porno perusing, pedophiliac who yearns to peak under his patient's skirts as he's drilling their teeth? Is it the cop assigned to computer fraud that's been secretly sampling the wares of the girls in the high school sex club? And can Paris and company catch the kidnapping killer before he gets Paris, because you know hes after her, else why did he bother to call in the first place.
The beauty of this book is that I was convinced the bad guy was the dentist, then I shifted my attention to the kid, then the cop, then back to the dentist, and so on and so on. Ms. Brown gives us three suspects, makes them all look guilty, then guiltier. What a great book.
