By Tami Hoag
Dutton Adult | 432pgs
Release Date: December 29, 2009

Tami Hoag takes readers on an intense hunt for a serial killer in her latest thriller, Deeper Than the Dead. The story opens in 1984, when three children stumble upon a partially buried corpse in the woods. The female victim’s eyes and mouth have been glued shut, and Detective Tony Mendez quickly recognizes this as the work of a serial murderer. In this time, DNA matching and internet searches are still the stuff of science fiction. But, Mendez hopes to use the most cutting edge techniques available to catch the killer, and reaches out to the FBI’s newly formed criminal profiling unit for help. They soon zero in on a suspect, and enlist the assistance of school teacher Anne Navarro to learn more about the man and his young son. If their suspicions are true, and this pillar of the community really is a cold-blooded killer, the affluent town of Oak Knoll, CA will be rocked to its foundations.

Hoag published her first novel in 1988. Her literary roots are in the Romance genre, where she penned the wildly popular Loveswept series for Bantam Books. Her break-out thriller, Night Sins (1995) was her first novel to reach the bestsellers list, and cemented her reputation as a mystery writer. Each of her successive books, since then, have been bestsellers. Deeper Than the Dead is Hoag’s first title for her new publisher, Dutton. Early reviews all seem to agree that it is an enjoyable read. Though Publishers Weekly warns: “…unresolved plot threads, both intentional and inadvertent, may put off veteran readers of the genre.”