Noah Bishop and his Special Crimes Unit team are under attack and all indicators point to someone on the inside. The team's investigation of a series of horrifying murders leads them to the small town of Serenade, Tennessee. Two more murders and a sniper's attempt on agent Hollis Templeton pits the team against their most deadly enemy to date.

Hollis has been learning to deal with amazing abilities that manifest at a rate unseen by anyone on Bishop's team. When she is teamed with telepath Reese DeMarco, they become a force to be reckoned with. Reese's desire to use his skills to protect Hollis has potentially devastating repercussions when SCU member Diana Brisco is taken out by a sniper and Hollis is unable to use her skills to help heal the gravely wounded woman. While trapped in the eerie "gray time," that place between life and death where she is able to communicate with spirits, Diana learns there is an evil force from the past seeking to use certain SCU team member's to return to the world of the living. While Diana and Hollis work in the "gray time," Bishop puts into play a cat-and-mouse game to stop a madman before he loses someone more important to him that his own life.

Kay Hooper's 12th journey into the world of the FBI's Special Crimes Unit in BLOOD TIES is a tautly written adventure. The entire SCU team is involved in the latest investigation, and the entire team is under attack by unknown forces. The reader is kept in the dark with the characters, and the final resolution and battle are both shocking and devastating. I love the SCU adventures, and BLOOD TIES is one of the best in the series. In BLOOD TIES, the reader is given footnotes to tell the previous story each character was involved in, and I found that beneficial. More than any of the previous stories, I would recommend knowledge of earlier stories in the series, particularly CHILL OF FEAR (which scared me silly!).