The Seventh Sense

A storm lashes South Florida. Frank Benedict, a high-powered attorney with a Miami firm, is driving home from what should have been the biggest night of his career. Instead, the client he's been wooing for months won't commit, threatening to blow his pending partnership. Now, fueled by alcohol and rage, Benedict aims his BMW at the nearest target - an Explorer crawling through the deluge. After slamming the vehicle full force, he backs up and hits it again. He's about to ram it a third time when the passenger door flies open and a pregnant woman stumbles out and collapses on the ground. Deeply shaken, he flees the scene. For FBI veteran Charlie Calloway, the search for the man who killed her husband and unborn child becomes a race against time. She teams up with former agent Doug Logan, a man whose near death experience left him with extraordinary psychic powers - to "read" inanimate objects, to pick up other peoples' pain, even to see visions from a human touch. Together, Charlie and Doug hunt through a maze of evidence that defies logical explanation and leads them into the most frightening place of all...the shadows of the human mind.

Kirkus Reviews

An FBI agent goes after the hit-and-run driver who has killed her husband and newborn son—and so does nearly everyone else in greater Miami. Frank Benedict, driving home from an unsuccessful dinner with the prospective client he's counting on to help him land a law partnership at 44, slams into the side of Charlie Calloway's van in a fit of rage, then backs up and hits it again before driving off into the stormy night. Charlie, awakening in a hospital to find that she's lost both husband and son—even her dog Paz has run away—vows revenge. Meanwhile, Frank's told his blue-blooded wife Anita just enough lies to enlist her help in ditching his ruined BMW in a nearby swamp and reporting it stolen. It's hardly the perfect crime, but he'd probably get away with it if it weren't for all the forces of justice arrayed against him. Item: FBI forensic specialist Leo Wells seeks out his misfit ex-colleague Doug Logan, who developed an uncanny sensitivity to psychic phenomena after surviving a near-death experience. Item: Charlie's old roommate, Dr. Lorraine Sneider, puts Charlie under hypnosis to see what details she can dredge up about the fatal night. Item: veterinarian Chrissy Lincoln, whose mother took in the fleeing Paz under the impression that he was a reincarnation of her late husband, recognizes him as the dog mentioned in accounts of the incident. Item: even Anita finds herself tempted by the $1 million reward Charlie's old friend Chico Ruiz, the gay talk-radio host, is offering. And now that Charlie herself, having been pronounced dead for two minutes at the hospital, has developed a seventh sense like Logan's, the biggest question is which of theseavengers can get to hapless Frank Benedict first. Too many cooks spoil the suspense, leaving this story most memorable as another example of MacGregor's distinctive amalgams of melodrama, parapsychology, and wrenching emotional loss (The Hanged Man, 1998, etc.). (Author tour)