Curse of Salem

Curse of Salem is one of Kay Hooper’s Bishop Special Crimes Unit novels, working in the long running romantic suspense and paranormal mystery franchise that has been one of the genre’s quieter successes for more than two decades. The Bishop SCU is a fictional FBI unit made up of agents with verifiable psychic abilities. Telepaths, empaths, mediums, precognitives, and a rotating cast of others, all working under the leadership of Special Agent in Charge Noah Bishop, who has his own significant abilities.

The series is divided into loose trilogies that share connected casts and overlapping plot threads. The Salem in the title points to the small Tennessee town setting of this entry, not the more famous Massachusetts witch trial city, and the curse of the title relates to the kind of paranormal trouble the SCU is regularly called in to investigate. Some kind of dark psychic force is working in the town, and the agents assigned to the case have to figure out what they are dealing with before more victims accumulate.

Kay Hooper writes the kind of romantic suspense that takes both halves of the genre seriously. The procedural plotting is solid, the psychic abilities are handled with internal consistency rather than as convenient deus ex machina solutions, and the romances grow out of shared danger and professional respect rather than just chemistry. The team dynamic across the series is well developed, and longtime readers care about the agents as a group as much as they care about each book’s central couple.

What distinguishes the Bishop SCU series from a lot of paranormal romantic suspense is the consistent quality of Hooper’s plotting and the patience she takes with her wider mythology. The SCU itself, the rules of the various psychic abilities the agents have, the recurring antagonists who turn out to have their own dark abilities, all of these have been developed across the series with the kind of care that rewards longtime readers.

For longtime Bishop SCU readers, Curse of Salem is a satisfying entry. For new readers, the series can be picked up at most points, but starting earlier gives the strongest sense of the team and the wider mythology.