SLEEPING WITH FEAR

Just when she most desperately needs her special powers, a psychic FBI agent is unable to draw on them in the final installment of Hooper’s latest trilogy (Chill of Fear, 2005, etc.).

Riley Crane is a member of the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit, a team of agents with a variety of psychic gifts. On unofficial assignment investigating possible occult activity in coastal South Carolina, she wakes up in bed covered with buckets of blood. She’s uninjured; the pistol that she keeps under her pillow is right where it’s supposed to be; and the rented house is undisturbed. But she can’t remember anything from the recent past. Why does her neatly unpacked wardrobe include sexy, brand-new lingerie? And why does someone whose meals are usually take-out have such a well-stocked refrigerator? Checking in with the home office, Riley finds that she has apparently been on autopilot for about three weeks. Her “spider sense” and clairvoyance may have deserted her, but her spunk has not. Riley straps on her piece and rejoins the world, looking for clues about what she was doing before she blacked out. It helps when local police summon her to a crime scene where it appears that devil worshipers have strung up and beheaded a middle-aged Caucasian male. Super-handsome District Attorney Ash Prescott arrives soon after, and hot shivers tell Riley she’s been boffing the DA, though she has no recollection of it. Trusting her sense memory, she is soon rolling again in the sheets with Ash, who not only has rippling muscles and broad shoulders but great culinary skills. (That explains the full fridge.) Food is extremely important for Riley, who has the metabolism of a hummingbird and needs extra energy for psychic bursts—a plot point that does not excuse the distracting product placement for PowerBars, which constantly turn up on cue. Despite further memory lapses, Riley never gives up, sensing that Someone Evil has it in for her.

Pallid thrills.