Product Description

A cold-blooded kidnapper has been playing a twisted game with a terrified Minnesota town. Now a respected member of the community sits in jail, accused of a chilling act of evil. But then another boy disappears, triggering panic in tiny Deer Lake. Have the police caught the wrong man? Or is there an even more sinister mind calculating each perverse move?

Prosecutor Ellen North believes she's building a case against the right man—and that he has an accomplice in the shadows. Suddenly she's swept into their dark game, her role changed from hunter to prey. And soon she wonders if she's a match for her opponent...an evil mind as guilty as sin.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #280265 in Books
• Published on: 1997-01-01
• Released on: 1997-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 624 pages

From Amazon.com
If her knuckle-whitening thriller Night Sins made you lock your doors, bolt your windows and turn on all the lights - keep them that way. Tami Hoag's latest bestseller will make you glad you did.

From Publishers Weekly
In this follow-up to the Night Sins, a prosecutor tries to convict a respected college professor of kidnapping.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This suspenseful novel, though it stands alone well, is the sequel to Night Sins (LJ 1/1/95), in which a child is abducted for sport by kidnappers who taunt the police, priding themselves on their superior minds. As this novel begins, the child has been returned, terrorized into silence, and one of the kidnappers, a popular college professor, has been caught in the act of trying to kill a police officer. Ellen North is prosecuting a strong case against the professor, but an unethical celebrity lawyer represents him before a star-struck judge. Meanwhile, the unknown conspirators kidnap and kill another child and then stage a series of new events that make it seem likely that the cops got the wrong man. The judge dismisses the case. Fortunately, a true-crime writer has come to follow this case, and his research leads to the discovery of the other conspirators, though not before they have done a lot more damage. The aura of evil is powerful in this book. Characters and relationships are well drawn and convincing. Public libraries will definitely want this.
-?Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Like mysteries? Find another author
This book is suspenseful as watching snail races and as exciting as waiting the leaves turn color in the fall. If you are an insomniac, try reading this to put you to sleep. If you like mysteries / thrillers / crime drama, find another author. This one is quite dry, boring, and unconvincing.

Long-winded suspense tale
I did not read the prequel to this book, but I did feel that the author gave enough information for me to understand the plot. Ellen North is given the thankless job of prosecuting a popular college professor who is accused of kidnapping a young boy in the community and then beating up a police woman. He is caught by the police chief, but his slick lawyer, who had betrayed Ellen romantically, works hard to prove him innocent. The characters in this book are painted as either good or evil and the plot winds and twists through about twice as many pages as is necessary. After reading this entry, I had no desire to go back and read another 600 pages to see what came before.

"Guilty" of Many Sins, But Still a Fun Read
"Guilty as Sin" is possibly more of a page-turner than it's soapy predecessor, "Night Sins." There are so many twists and surprises that its a wonder they can all be contained in a mere 606 pages (paperback edition). In fact, this time out, the story of the prosecution of a kidnapper who may or may not be guilty reaches a near histrionic level, with murders, car chases, exploding cars and, of course, romantic intrigue. Thankfully, Hoag doesn't spend quite as much time on romantic subplots as she did in "Night Sins." Actually, given that apparently almost every man in Deer Lake, Minnesota, is either a slimy, self-absorbed male chauvinist pig (Judge Grabko, Paul Kirkwood, hot-shot defense attorney Tony Costello--OK, he's an import from Minneapolis, but still...) or ineffectual weenie (County Attorney Rudy Stovich, a few sheriff's deputies), its a wonder the women there bother with the opposite sex at all. That's why Hoag has to have a visitor like true crime author Jay Butler Brooks, whose motives are as suspect as his frequent references to an Uncle Hooter. When he goes after Assistant County Attorney Ellen North, the fact that he wants to get into her pants more than into her filing cabinet is supposed to illustrate how he's really an honorable man. In a mating ritual usually only encountered in movies or on TV, he sets about winning Ms. North's heart by alternately scaring her or by being relentlessly irritating. Also like in movies or on TV, this tactic works.

Like "Night Sins," Hoag uses a broad brush to paint "Guilty as Sin." There is much exposition about the evil lurking in this innocent little town, about how kidnapping and murdering people is evil (in case you didn't know) and how all this evil has changed lives forever. And when it comes to portraying the media--well, I think the Bush administration would paint a more flattering picture of reporters than Hoag does in either of her "Sin" novels. Apparently news-gathering is evil, too.

Nevertheless, for sheer entertainment value, I enjoyed "Guilty as Sin." Hoag is a gifted storyteller and I was glad to lose sleep staying up to read "just one more chapter" of her engrossing, if a bit flawed, suspense novel.