Pimeduse piiril

Dr. Samantha Owens #1

by J.T. Ellison

Tõsiusklikku inimest rünnatakse igalt poolt
Doktor Samantha Owens alustab otsast peale – uus linn, uus töökoht, uus mees, uus elu. Ta püüab distantseerida end abikaasa ja laste laastavast kaotusest, aga vanad haavad on jätnud sügavad armid.
Enne kui ta Georgetowni ülikooli kohtupatoloogia kateedris oma asjad lahti jõuab pakkida, kutsutakse ta konsultandiks juhtumi juurde, mis on vapustanud pealinna ja kogu riiki. Tundmatu haigusetekitaja Washingtoni metroos on põhjustanud üleriikliku paanika. Kolm inimest on surnud – ainult kolm.
Ime ja mõistatus...
Meediakära ja sisejulgeoleku häirekellade keskel lahkab Sam piinliku hoolega kolme ohvri elu ja jõuab ärevaks tegevale järeldusele. See ei ole tüüpiline terrorist, kes laialdaste rünnakutega kaost tekitab, vaid kunstnik, kes kasutab palju peenemat, täpsemat hävitusvahendit. Salamõrtsukas, kelle motiiv on väga isiklik ja tavainimese jaoks arusaamatu.
Xander Whitfield, endine eriüksuslane ja Sami uus kallim, teab hästi, mida tähendab balansseerimine õige ja vale piiril ning see, kui pead tegema valet asja õigetel põhjustel. Ainult tema muret tekitav seos mõrtsukaga võib viia Sami tõe väljaselgitamiseni... ja taas kord tulejoonele.

Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Suspense, Crime, Romantic Suspense

280 pages, Paperback

First published April 24, 2012

About the author

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 30 novels, and the EMMY® award winning co-host of the literary TV show A WORD ON WORDS. She also writes fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker.

With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards They have also been optioned for television, and published in 28 countries.

J.T. lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens, one of whom is a ghost, where she is hard at work on her next novel.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not really sure how I feel about this one.

I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it.
I wasn’t wowed, but I wasn’t disappointed.
It wasn't entirely predictable, but it wasn't satisfying either.

See what I mean? My feelings are all over the place.

Samantha Owens is a medical examiner that’s called upon by her first love’s mother, to return to D.C., to complete an autopsy. Her son’s been murdered and she’s convinced it’s more than just a random carjacking. She wants Samantha to find out if Eddie’s body provides any evidence to support her theory.

It’s been years since Samantha has laid eyes on Eddie, but really? Is it just me, or is it a little awkward and morbid for someone to cut up the body of a person they once loved? Wouldn’t you just suggest someone that you trust emphatically for the job, instead? For some reason, I just couldn't get past this or accept that anyone in their right mind would even consider doing this. It felt gross, weird, wrong.

I was kind of thrown by the ending, too. All along, the author led us to believe that maybe the spark between one of the detectives and Doctor Owens would lead to something more, but in the last few chapters she crams in a relationship with someone else entirely. It felt so rushed. Almost like an afterthought. Looks like maybe it was something she had to squeeze in for the next book. According to the blurb, Dr. Owens is starting over somewhere new with said guy.

If I'm being completely honest, I’m not feeling very motivated to continue on with the series. So, I guess that means this is the end of the road for me and Dr. Owens.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading and not particularly loving the middle installments of J.T. Ellison's Taylor Jackson series of novels, I'd given up on the series and Ellison. While I enjoy reading novels set in and around Music City, the fun of seeing local real-world landmarks incorporated into the pages of standard procedural had lost its appeal.

So it came as huge surprise to me when I saw Ellison's latest, A Deeper Darkness on the new books shelves at the library that not only did I pick it up but that that back cover blurb was enough a hook to make me want to give Ellison another shot.

In the months and years following the Nashville floods, coroner Samantha Owen is struggling under a flood of her own. She lost her family in the flood and has been muddling through life since that time. When the mother of an ex-boyfriend calls, asking Sam to come to Washington DC to offer a second opinion on the cause of death of her son, Sam reluctantly agrees. Sam and her ex, Eddie Donovan, had a brief romance while in grad school with Eddie breaking off the romance to return to his first love, the military. Donovan served a couple of tours in the Middle East, married and had two children, but never lost contact with Sam.

When Donovan is killed in apparent car-jacking, his mother Eleanor thinks there's something more at work and asks Sam to look into it. As Sam probes into Eddie's death, she discovers a vast conspiracy at work with several members of Eddie's military team all dying under mysterious circumstances. Working with a local DC detective, Sam begins to unravel the real reason Eddie died and how it all connects to something the DOD is trying to cover up from the team's time in the Middle East.

If you're familiar with the Taylor Jackson series, you'll probably remember Sam Owens as supporting character to the Taylor-universe. Even if you don't recall this, Sam reflects on how Taylor would react to certain events unfolding in the novel.

Thankfully, many of the weaknesses that turned me off the Taylor Jackson series are downplayed in this novel, though they could rear their ugly head if Ellison decides to begin an on-going series about Sam. Ellison's novels are always one that demand a quick turn of the page, with fresh revelations, clues and twists coming at just the right pace to keep the reader interested and speculating on how they'll all fit together. As a procedural novel, Down Among the Darkness is as confident as other, bigger name procedural entries on the market today.

Because Sam is reeling from the death of her family, the novel wisely doesn't indulge in the romantic subplots that hampered some of the later Taylor novels. There's still a few hints sprinkled throughout, but at no point does Darkness abruptly shift gears from the central mystery to personal romantic entanglements.

However, for a novel built on Sam's loss and tragic events surrounding the Nashville floods a couple of years ago, Ellison keeps the revelation of exactly what happened to Sam's family too far off-stage, to the point that after said specifics are presented in the final pages of the novel, I found myself thinking it would have been better for Ellison to never address them directly on the printed page. Leave it up to the reader to piece together things from Sam's reactions and growth over the course of the story.

And while Ellison is good, she's still quite up there in the upper pantheon of great mystery writers that are on my "must read" set of authors like Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman or Elizabeth George. Each of those authors offers compelling, page turning mysteries with on-going characters with complicated and interesting back stories and histories. Ellison has the mystery side down, but so far her characters don't feel like old friends like Tess, Lynley or Harry Bosch.

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Medical examiner Samantha Owens is a wreck. She has been ever since her husband and two children drowned in a flood. Her OCD has become worse and worse, and she is living a lonely and isolated life.

Then she gets an unexpected call - from her ex-boyfriend's mother. Her ex-boyfriend, Donovan, is dead. The police say it was just a random carjacking, but his mother is convinced it's foul play. She wants Sam to come up and re-do the autopsy. Sure enough, what Sam finds brings on a shit storm of problems...
...

This was a good mystery. Well put-together. The over-arching theme of the book is loss. Being a widow, being a parent whose child has died.

You've also got PTSD, war veteran issues, the prevalence of rape in the military, etc.

The author tries to slide a little romance in, but I have to say that I am NOT a fan of mystery-romance hybrids. So I was actually rather annoyed that she starts putting lovey-dovey crap into the book.

But overall, a decent story and a gripping mystery.

[Adrienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another humdinger of a thriller featuring Dr Sam Owens. Acting as a FBI Consultant utilising her pathologist skills. This story has her pulled into past working as a 2nd pathologist on the body of a former boyfriend. Requested his mother. A lady Sam had a close relationship too.
Unputdownable

[Wendy Hines · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samantha Owens is a medical examiner and she's very good at her job. But since she lost her husband and her children to the Nashville floods, her heart isn't in it anymore. She just goes through the motions. She's been grieving for over two years now and when it gets to be too much for her, she cleans herself. It could be just her hands with sanitizer or a full body shower. She counts to herself, One Mississippi, two Mississippi... She isn't sure what do anymore. She doesn't want to live and she doesn't want to die.

When an old friend calls her with the sad news that Samantha's first love, Edward Donovan, has died, Sam is overwrought. She's always wondered 'what if' as the years have rolled by and she knows she still loves him. When his mother begs Sam to come up and do a second autopsy, Sam's defenses slam down. She doesn't know if she can handle it, but if Eleanor is right, that Eddie was murdered, then he deserves justice and all she can do to help.

When she arrives, she is met by Eddie's grieving wife, Susan with coolness. Susan knows how much Samantha and Eddie meant to one another at a different time, but she is still jealous. Eventually though, she overcomes her feelings to ask Sam for her help in finding out who killed Eddie. Sam's findings do prove Eddie was killed and she involves herself in the investigation. But when things begin to heat up and someone tries to kill her, she realizes that she does want to live, but at what cost?

J.T. Ellison will remember Samantha as the best friend of Taylor Jackson, Ellison's Taylor Jackson series. Taylor does not make an appearance, but Samantha holds her own, even as she's grieving and trying to right her upside down life. With grief, friendship, the blossom of romance and the searing intense heat of suspicion that only Ellison can provide, A DEEPER DARKNESS is a must read for thriller fans! I can't wait for more!

[David Freas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is very stereotypical for the genre. The main character, Samantha Owens, traumatized by the drowning of her husband and children two years earlier, has withdrawn into herself until the death of a former lover draws her into the investigation of multiple murders. And, of course, interacting with two new men in a city far from her home slowly draws her out of her shell.

There are tense scenes throughout this novel but it never quite reaches a peak. The reader never breaks into a nervous sweat wondering how the heroine will escape the danger she faces.

A major character in the story is named Susan. Keeping Sue and Sam straight sometimes was a challenge.

This book wasn’t good enough to make me want to read more of the author’s work.

[Kjen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good read for me and my first J.T. Ellison, as well. The characters were real and well developed. I enjoyed the imagery...both spatial and emotional. Sam is a very intriguing character...strong but damaged. The first half was slower since I had to get used to the POV constantly changing. This is just an author style issue and is expected when reading an author who is new to me. By 60% things really pick up and there is better flow. I love Xander, of course, and would like more details on their relationship as the series continues.

[PinkAmy loves books, cats and naps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Medical examiner Samantha Owens, still reeling from the drowning deaths of her husband and twins, travels back to DC to perform an autopsy on her ex, only to be drawn into the investigation of his death. Donovan’s death, initially ruled a random carjacking, now suspected of a more sinister motive, may only be the beginning.

A DEEPER DARKNESS, my first JT Ellison novel, grabbed me from the beginning. Normally I’m not interested in stories with a military angle, but Ellison’s focus on Sam, her past and present pain kept me engaged. Samantha is such a complex character. With both OCD and PTSD, she struggled to stay present in her life, so right by Donovan and his family and keep her head above water.

Ellison connected all the dots in both character and plot, capturing Samantha’s psych symptoms perfectly. The minor characters were also compelling.

I guess part of the ending early on, the other didn’t cross my mind. I’ll be interested in reading more Samantha Owens books.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Dr Samantha Owens, head medical examiner for the state of Tennessee, has had a rough couple of years since her husband and twins died in a flood. Washing her hands repeatedly seems to calm her. After Sam receives a pleading call from the mother of her first love to conduct a second autopsy on her son, Sam heads to Washington D.C.

I've read several other series by Ellison but the Owens series is a first for me. The book was easy to read and I always appreciate that. I liked the book more as it went along. I liked the ending. Readers who like stories with former military personnel may enjoy this book. I would definitely read another Samantha Owen book.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow what a rollercoaster ride. 5 men and a woman who are stationed in Afghanistan years later they start to be killed. Who is doing the KILLING and WHY ????

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads Description- As a medical examiner, Samantha Owens knows her job is to make a certain sense of death with crisp methodology and precision instruments.

But the day the Tennessee floods took her husband and children, the light vanished from Sam's life. She has been pulled into a suffocating grief no amount of workaholic ardor can penetrate—until she receives a peculiar call from Washington, D.C.

On the other end of the line is an old boyfriend's mother, asking Sam to do a second autopsy on her son. Eddie Donovan is officially the victim of a vicious carjacking, but under Sam's sharp eye the forensics tell a darker story. The ex-Ranger was murdered, though not for his car.

Forced to confront the burning memories and feelings about yet another loved one killed brutally, Sam loses herself in the mystery contained within Donovan's old notes. It leads her to the untouchable Xander, a soldier off-grid since his return from Afghanistan, and then to a series of brutal crimes stretching from that harsh mountainous war zone to this nation's capital. The tale told between the lines makes it clear that nobody's hands are clean, and that making sense of murder sometimes means putting yourself in the crosshairs of death.

I was introduced to this author late last year and Ellison has now become one of my favorite mystery/suspense writers. Her plotlines are always very dynamic but fresh. Its not always the same ole same ole with Ellison. She has finely tuned characters that after reading several from her Taylor Jackson series, I feel that I really know these "people". Ellison also does not resort to what many female mystery writers do which is depend on a romantic aspect. Ellison seems to avoid this filler and actually forms a good story that can catch the attention of female readers without any bodice ripping.

The Deeper Darkness takes a spin from her Jackson series with ME Samantha Owens as lead in this book. After the death of her children and husband she just cannot seem to get it together. Sam gets a call to do a secondary post on her first love, Eddie Donavan. Feeling compelled to do this for her old flame she travels to DC to do the autopsy. From there she inserts herself into the investigation because she feels at fault for the loss of everyone she has ever loved. With many thrills, spins and turns, Ellison again takes us on her hectic journey to find the truth. However, this story is a little different in that is has a more somber tone than any of the books I have read from Ellison. This book made me sad at times to see the hurt in all of these women's souls. I would love to see this book spin into a new series from Ellison. It also deals with the military and the current events in the fighting in Iraq and Afganistan. As a reader, I could definitely tell that she did her homework on her subject matter. I loved having Sam as a lead and there are so many plots to explore with an ME involved in the police investigation. Maybe she can be the newer fresher Patricia Cornwell's Kaye Scarpetta. This is a 5 star must read for any mystery fan!

[Shelleyrae at Book'd Out · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am sure I have read at least one or more of JT Ellison's Taylor Jackson series novels though I don't seem to have a record of it. A Deeper Darkness is an engaging spin off from that series featuring Taylor's best friend, Medical Examiner Samantha Owens.

Asked what I thought of A Deeper Darkness, the first phrase that came to mind was 'easily consumable'. It's a quick read that demands very little and provides a few hours of entertaining escape. The novel is deftly plotted with clues to piece together and twists that maintain suspense. The pace keeps the pages turning and the main conspiracy storyline resolves in a tension filled confrontation. Ellison references topical events and issues - the Tennessee floods, women in front line combat, the struggles of returned armed forces servicemen and women and obsessive compulsive disorder which provides added interest and depth to the story.

The characters of A Deeper Darkness are well developed with interesting personal histories and motivations. I liked Samantha and thought Ellison did a credible job of creating a well rounded, sympathetic protagonist. The details of Samantha's tragic personal background is revealed piecemeal throughout the story with her OCD a symptom of her grief and emotional stress. Donavon's death is yet another blow despite it being so long since their intimate relationship ended and explains why Samantha is so willing to get involved further in the case. The conflict between Samantha and Donovan's wife, Susan, seemed a little forced to me though that element is quickly resolved.
Detective Darren Fletcher is the the cynical but dedicated officer, I enjoyed his wry sense of humour and his partner, Detective Lonny Hart provides a good foil for him.
Even though we meet a few members of the Ranger team briefly, and others not all, Ellison ensures they are encapsulated as individuals. I would have liked to learn more about them but it wasn't strictly necessary in terms of the story.

I enjoyed A Deeper Darkness and I am intrigued by the premise for the second installment of this series, titled Edge of Black, due for publication in December.

[Elvan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read. I think I like Dr. Sam even more than Taylor Jackson. Angst and intelligence are such a great combo in a heroine.
The novel loses a star for dragging in the middle, and for telegraphing the bad guy a bit too early for this reader. Looking forward to more ME time in the next book and the new release coming out very soon.

[Beverly Duffy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the main character Medical examiner Owens. This story was q quick read. Overall it was an okay read.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Samantha Owens has lived the last two years of her life in a fog of tragedy, only surviving by focusing on her work as the Chief Medical Examiner for Nashville, but not really living since the waters of a cataclysmic flood stole her entire family from her. Sam gets a call from the mother of a former love Eddie Donovan, a love that is now also lost to tragedy but his mother is not convinced of the circumstances of his death and calls Sam to perform a second autopsy to be sure. Needing an excuse to escape from her self imposed prison for awhile Sam answers the call to help even though she hasn’t heard from Eddie since they broke up after his decision to join the service. When she arrives in DC she’s not welcomed by everyone, Eddie’s wife isn’t at all happy to be hosting a former girlfriend and the detective on his case sees her as a distraction at best and a hindrance at worst. This does not deter Sam as she goes about her business letting the dead tell their secrets and this death is no different it also has secrets to tell, secrets that are pointing in the direction of murder especially as further evidence comes to light and another murder is committed that has ties to Eddie and his time as an Army Ranger serving in Afghanistan. The more Sam digs the more questions arise and with the help of detective Darren Fletcher who’s come to welcome her help they start putting pieces together, but the answers are still just out of reach and the terrain is getting very hazardous as the body count is piling up. But being here a part of something bigger than her, Sam realizes that a partial healing is taking place and is realizing that the human heart is much more than mere valves and blood flow and much more resilient than she first thought. The question is will she survive this new threat long enough to find out what else her heart is telling her or will she become just another victim of a different kind of flood.
JT Ellison has once again gone above and beyond what I expect and done it beautifully. She’s taken fact and fiction and together she’s woven an intricate patterned drama filled mystery. She uses the very real Tennessee flood of 2010, some call it the thousand year flood where very real lives were lost and some of those exactly as was depicted here. She also brings light to life after combat for our homebound men and the real healing they must also go through. Her storyline is imaginative, it’s illusive, it’s brilliantly filled with twists and turns and kept me from closing the pages until I either found out what happened or fell asleep trying to. Her narrative is that of the profession shown, the cop-speak and doc-speak fluently mixed with the everyday dialogue of everyday people. Her characters are all so well defined that I knew them intimately by the end of the novel, some I came to care for and some I hoped to stand under a large falling tree. Is this a mystery, very definitely but it’s so much more, it’s a love story, past present and future, it’s a drama with an edge and it’s a story about one woman’s weakness, her strength and her will to live on.
If you’re lucky enough to have read JT’s Taylor Jackson series then you already know Sam, if this is your first foray into the vivid mind of Ms. Ellison you will learn all you need to know and yet at the end you might be itching to find out what else this talented author has written while you’ll also get to know Sam a little better as well.
JT it’s as always my immense pleasure to be an early reader for you and I look forward not only to your next story but the fact that you’ll be sharing yourself with my B&N.com book club later on in the year.

[Dotti Elrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this series as much as her Taylor Jackson series. But I had a hard time getting into the story. This series focuses around Taylor's best friend Sam. Sam is the chief medical examiner for Nashville.
As the story gets underway, we learn that two years earlier, Sam lost her husband and twins in a flash flood. Sam is still grieving, and not handling her loss well.
When she gets a call to go to Washington D.C. at the request of an old boyfriend's mother, she sees it as a way to escape for awhile. Eddie Donovan was her college sweetie. They loved each other, but Donovan broke it off with Sam when he joined the Army. He was going to be a Ranger. Now, fifteen years later, Donovan was killed in a car jacking. His mother has asked Sam to perform a second autopsy. She just knows something else is going on.
When she arrives, she meets Donovan's wife and children. She doesn't realize how much it hurts that he's moved on and how happy he was with his life.
The second autopsy does show something that was missed the first time. It prompts the detectives working the case to take another look. Then a second man is killed, and its learned he was in the same squad as Donovan. Now they have two dead men who are linked by their jobs and their service together.
Sam does a lot of healing in helping Donovan's wife and mother deal with their own loss. But she doesn't really start to feel better until she meets Xander, another Ranger who served with Donovan.
This story really dragged for me. There was a lot of internal dialog from Sam trying to deal with her own issues. Then throw in some detecting, then back to Sam's issues. It picked up in the last five or so chapters when they started closing in on the killer. But up to that point, it was so slow. I found it hard to pick it back up when I had to stop reading. I hope the next book is as exciting as the other series. This one was just so-so for me.

[Christa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Deeper Darkness was a wonderful, suspenseful book. I have admired the character of Samantha Owens in Ellison's Taylor Jackson series, and it was wonderful to see her as the main character of her own book. The story of what she went through, and the loss she suffered in the past few years, was heartbreaking. This book had some great secondary characters, and a fast moving plot that kept me guessing throughout. It was a compelling book, and I hope that Ellison will continue this as a series.

Samantha Owens has been through almost unimaginable tragedy over the last few years, and when her former medical school lover is shot and killed during a carjacking, she feels that everyone she has loved is dead. At the request of her former lover's mother, she leaves Nashville behind and goes to Washington, D.C. to conduct a second postmortem on Eddie Donovan. As soon as Sam arrives, it starts to seem as though someone is out to get the men in Eddie's former Ranger company. Sam assists the detectives in the case as they try to puzzle out what is happening. As she helps them go through the clues, she is unsure of which of those connected to Eddie she can trust. While working to uncover who is behind Eddie's murder, Sam has an opportunity to evaluate what she has left in her life and to try to come to terms with herself.

This was a compelling book that I did not want to put down. There was a great deal of suspense, and a few surprises. I loved reading about Sam Owens, and I thought she made a great, well-developed lead character. I am hoping to read more about her and some of the wonderful secondary characters that were introduced in this book. I received A Deeper Darkness as an ARC through Netgalley.

[TJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Samantha has been a particular favorite of mine throughout the Taylor Jackson series so I was excited to see her get her own series. Upon reading, however, one realizes there are some noticeable shortcomings in this first installment. First, with all the different points of view running, along with the series set up, the story slogged along at a snails pace. It wasn't until almost 3/4 of the way through that the suspense actually picked up enough to truly keep the pages turning.
The most jarring problem, however, was the insta-love at the end of the book. Where did that come from? The characters didn't even meet until the last quarter of the book. We're told they spend a few days getting to know each other then, BAM! The very next scene has her in love and moving in with him... What?!?! We didn't even get to see any relationship develop! Leaving the reader feeling sorely cheated.
Still, now that the foundation has been laid AND If one ignores that BIG relationship glitch, this could prove to be a great new series.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I seem to be on my own with my views on this book!

Urgh, I nearly gave up on it before I got a quarter of the way through. What a load of snivelling tripe. Pages and pages of tortured inner dialogue by a female protagonist who was so rippled with misery, self-doubt and OCD that she could barely function. Boring! Thankfully it got a bit better by about a third through so the story ended up being kind of reasonable. Even so there were a number of unresolved issues from earlier in the book which seemed important at the time and were never satisfactorily explained. An example is the logistics of Donovan's death. Where exactly did the shooter come from? How did they get him to where they wanted him? And so on - a very poor effort.

[Louisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fantastic book! Really enjoyed reading it, amazing mystery, loved being with these characters again, and now for more!

First read April 1st-2nd, 2012
Oh, I loved this book! It was heartbreaking what Sam lost, but she grew as a character because of her loss and her pain, and the mystery was so great! Can't wait to see what's going to happen next, and I hope we get to see some of these characters some more!

[Stephanie Jenkins Ortiz Cerrillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first J. T. Ellison read and I'll definitely be adding him to my go to authors for great suspense/mysteries.

Samantha Owens is a workaholic medical examiner. She finds herself as more comfortable with the dead than the living after losing her family to a freak flood in Tennessee. Her life takes a huge turn when her former love, Eddie Donovan, mother calls her to do a second autopsy on her son, Eddie. The death is listed as a vicious carjacking ending with Eddie's death. Samantha, through her astounding skills as a ME, begins to unravel a different story about Eddie's death. As Sam begins reading Eddie's journals the plot thickens and some of the other members of Eddie's elite team of soldier's start turning up dead.

This book has a lot of twists and truths that arise from the past that leads Sam to one of Eddie's fellow soldiers, Xander, who should be off limits to Sam, and could be the killer. You'll believe the killer is several different characters before the killer is revealed.

[Lyn (Readinghearts) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A number of my friends have read books by J.T. Ellison, so as an author she has been on my radar for a while. I received the second book of her new series featuring Medical Examiner Samantha Owens as an Advanced Reader book, so decided to start with this series. Samantha Owens is one of those women that we find often in books these days. Smart, sexy, accomplished...in short a strong, successful woman. At least she used to be. That was before tragedy hit her two years ago.

In A Deeper Darkness, the first book in the Samantha Owens series Samantha finds that tragedy has struck again in the form of the death of her college love, Eddie Donavan. The police have ruled his death as a simple car-jacking, but his mother disagrees. Hence her request to Samantha to perform a second autopsy and take a second look.

That is the way Ellison begins this top-notch thriller. From there the plot continues at a fast pace, with enough plot twists and interesting occurrences to keep the reader interested. It is quickly obvious that there is more here than meets the eye. What do a car-jacking, PTSD, a diary of secrets written in Latin, and a ex-Army Ranger turned recluse have in common? That is the central question that keeps the reader turning pages in this thrill ride. One thing missing in this book, though, was the heavy romance angle that is usually prevalent in this type of book. I actually appreciated that as I loved the focus on the mystery part of the story.

The characters that Ellison populates this book with is a definite positive. None of the characters are cookie cutter in any way, least of all Samantha, whose demons have driven her to OCD behavior. As a mom, I don't even want to imagine what it would be like to lose a child, and that fact had me feeling a lot of empathy for Sam. The lead detective on the case is battling his own demons, as is the widow of the deceased who never felt that she measured up to Sam, and Xander Whitfeild, the reclusive ex-Ranger who was one of Eddie's best friends. Yet Ellison is able to take all of these characters and not only makes you care about their personal demons, but she does an excellent job of tying them together into a team of characters that really work.

I did find, however, that I wished I would have read the Taylor Jackson books by Ms. Ellison first. (I plan to remedy that quickly)as I believe the story of the demons that Samantha was haunted by had already been brought to light in those books. As a first time reader of Ms. Ellison's work I was a bit put off by her continued alluding to the tragedy that took Samantha's family without ever really explaining it. She finally did explain, but it was very late in the book. I think if I had read the Taylor Jackson books and been familiar with the character this would not have been an issue.

The good news, though, is that I have another bunch of books from this author to read while I wait for the third book of this series to come out in 2014.

[Janebbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like your murder mysteries with less violence and gore... but enjoy high suspense with a hint of romance...J. T. Ellison is the gal for you!

A DEEPER DARKNESS is the first Samantha Owens, Tennessee medical examiner, thriller by Ellison (who has written a bunch of mysteries featuring Sam's friend, a homicide detective in Nashville). Samantha's a workaholic professional trying to forget the day a Tennessee flood took her husband and children. She has a great team who understands her aversion for performing autopsies on drowned victims and her incessant hand-washing.

At the beginning of the tale, we meet retired Ranger Eddie Donovan. It is the day of his death. Eddie has served three tours in Afghanistan and has retired, sick of "nation building," and is working as a security consultant in Washington, DC. He's also taking a day off to be with his wife and daughters....until he gets a call that summons him to his death. Eddie Donovan was a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment Bravo Company in Afghanistan, a proud and loyal member of a band of five "brothers" who served together: King (Perry Fisher), Doc (Donovan), Shaky Guy (William Everett), Mutant (Alexander Whitfield), and Jackel (Harold Croswell). And there's also a young friendly woman with the unit, Maggie Lyons.

After Eddie's death, Samantha receives a call from his mother to perform a second autopsy. The police are calling the murder a carjacking gone wrong. Sam goes to DC...renews her friendship with her former lover's mother and meets the wife. Along with a gruff detective, she discovers that of the five band of brothers, only one is still living. And that Maggie Lyons is on the run. There's a hint of friendly fire, an illegitimate daughter, an Army coverup...the pages are really turning. (Except the missing pages written in Latin in Donovan's journal.)

J. T. Ellison has given us well-defined and likeable characters, prudent use of 50 cents and 4 letter words, realistic crime scenes, a 16-year-old bottle of Scotch, and two cold beers in a wilderness.

I'll be ordering EDGE OF NIGHT (Samantha Owens, Book 2) as soon as it's published in the USA.

Enjoy,
Jane

[Amy Lignor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The intrigue begins from the word ‘go’ in this novel as an ex-Army Ranger, Eddie Donovan, begins his day by having a joyous time with his wife and two daughters on ‘The Mall’ in Washington. Unfortunately, he is called away by his employer and ends up dead: a victim of a vicious carjacking. Now Eddie’s mother doesn’t believe that what the police report says is true. She is completely convinced that the ‘carjacking’ was simply an excuse that his employers had given to the public.

Calling on an old girlfriend of her son’s, Samantha Owens, Eddie’s mother begs her to solve her son’s mysterious death. Samantha is the Head Medical Examiner for the State of Tennessee, and Eddie’s mother wants nothing more than for her to come to D.C. and perform a second autopsy to make sure that nothing was missed.

Samantha has her own problems. She lost her husband and children to the Tennessee floods and has since turned into a workaholic. However, this one phone call from the past puts her on the road to recovery, as she heads to Washington to help her former friends.
Sam is a very sharp doctor, and although the carjacking story was the one ‘bought’ by the public, her autopsy tells a whole different story: Eddie definitely was murdered, but not for his car.

Soon Sam finds herself confronting another death of a person that once meant a great deal to her, and discovers notes that lead her to Xander, an ex-soldier who’s returned from Afghanistan with information that could bring the ‘situations’ that happened in that country home to America.

This book is a definite one-day read that covers some truly horrendous facts that happened in the past. But following Samantha and Xander, along with Xander’s dog, Thor, is one of the best ways to spend a Sunday afternoon. The writing in this book is ‘A-one,’ and hopefully this author is planning to gift the world with other Samantha Owens’ stories for a long time to come.

*Reviewed by Amy Lignor - Author of Until Next Time - for Suspense Magazine

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

J.T. Ellison’s A Deeper Darkness is a thriller that pulls the reader deeper and deeper into the story with its well-paced suspense and complex characters.

Ex-Army Ranger Eddie Donovan was murdered in an apparent carjacking, but his mother doesn’t believe that is all there is to the story. She asks Eddie’s ex-girlfriend Dr. Samantha Owens, who is now the head medical examiner for the state of Tennessee, to come to Washington, D. C. and perform a second autopsy. What Sam finds pulls her into the center of an investigation that she never could have expected.

Both Eddie and another man from his Army Rangers unit have been murdered in Washington, D.C., and the ballistics show that they were shot with the same gun. In Virginia, another man from their unit killed his mother and committed suicide. Only one man remains from the group of friends who served together. Off-the-grid loner Xander Whitfield is either the key to solving the murders or the prime suspect for all of them. Something happened in Afghanistan that the group covered up, but this secret won’t stay buried. No one is truly innocent.

A Deeper Darkness is a heart-pounding thriller, but it is also a story of love and loss. Sam’s husband and two young children were killed in the floods in Nashville in 2010. She is struggling with her grief for the family she lost. She has developed OCD that she tries to ignore, but the mounting pressure from this case pushes her struggle to the forefront of her life. This is the first novel in a new series, so readers will get to follow Sam as she continues to heal.

[Ronna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellison starts a new series with a take-off character from another series. Dr. Samantha Owens is a Forensic Pathologist in Nashville, Tennessee. She's been devoted to her job until tragedy struck her. Her husband and two children are dead and she lives with self imposed guilt daily. When the mother of her old lover, Donovan,calls and asks for help, Samantha reluctantly agrees.

Donavan's body has been found shot in his car. The Washington,DC police are calling it a car jacking, but his mom believes there was more to his death. After the autopsy, Samantha also believes this ex-Ranger's death was a more complicated murder. Samantha investigates with a couple of interesting policeman, delving into a long held secret of friendly fire and more from the Ranger's service in Afghanistan. Tensions are taught as Samantha must also work with Donovan's wife, who knows of Samantha's and Donovan's past affair.

This book is psychological, revealing the mind set of everyone involved. It also becomes fast passed as Samantha finds answers and finds herself in great danger too. Good start to a new series. Relationships are set up to continue a few of these characters in this series, which should be exciting reading.

[Shendoah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up JT Ellison after reading the Brit in the FBI collaboration with Catherine Coulter. Seeing there were two series by her, I picked one. Apparently I picked the spin off, so if that hurts your brain, start the Taylor Jackson series first.

I don't know, but it might give the main character Sam a bit more of a back story and structure, which was sort of what I felt was missing. I figured that was a "first book" thing, but maybe it's because the author assumed we already had an acquaintance with her and just didn't plug it into the story for this book.

This was a fairly quick, easy read - it has a changing POV flow, which doesn't bother me, but bothers others. YMMV. This book takes place in a very short period of time, which keeps the story moving, but also seems to me to be too short of a time frame for the flip from trauma induced emotional isolation to "ready to start over" . (it's a romantic suspense, we know the girl is gonna get the guy folks). I'm also not a psychologist, so maybe it is just my perception, and it can indeed happen that fast.

JT does a good job managing the emotional flow of the characters, the pace of the action, and setting you up for future escapades. I look forward to running into these folks again and hanging out with them.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a huge fan of J.T. Ellison's "Taylor Jackson" series I wondered if she could pull it off with a spin-off focusing on Taylor's best friend, Dr. Samantha Owens, Nashville's Chief Forensic Examiner.

The answer is "Oh yes, she sure can".

Having her whole world torn apart 2 years earlier, Sam receives a call from a very dear friend from her past, the mother of a former love Eddie Donovan. Eddie dies suddenly and mysteriously and she asks Sam to come and perform a second autopsy on him because she is not convinced of the circumstances surrounding his death.

Once arriving in Washington, Sam's life becomes a whirlwind of non-stop action and suspense as she tries to piece together the events leading up to Eddie's death.

This novel had me glued to the pages from beginning to end and I wasn't ready for the story to be over when I arrived at the last page.
I hope it is the first book of a "Dr. Samantha Owens" series.

Bravo J.T. you've done it again!

[Eadie Burke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has it all - romance, mystery, and a forensic medical examiner who is smart and sexy. Samantha Owens is called by the mother of her ex-boyfriend to help solve his murder. This book kept me turning the pages as I was eager to find out what happened to Eddie Donovan to make someone want him dead. It has a cast of interesting characters and an intriguing plot that keeps you twisting, turning and guessing until the very end. This was my 2nd Ellison book and I look forward to reading the next book in this series as I find her a very talented writer. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys mystery thrillers with a bit of romance.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a powerful, suspense novel introducing Dr. Sam Owens who I head ME for the state of Tn. When a former boyfriend is killed his mother asks Sam to do a 2nd autopsy to determine cause of death. That is just the start of terrifying odyssey that involves govt. coverups and the brotherhood of a group of army Rangers. I'm looking forward to book 2 in the series.