Did you need the psychic? Or are you just dumb?
Book review of Chasing Evil by Robert Hilland and John Edward
Chasing Evil by John Edward and Robert Hilland
Published: September 2, 2025 by St. Martin's Essentials
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Synopsis:
How a skeptical FBI agent reached out to a famous psychic for help on a baffling case – and the twenty-five-year crime-solving journey that followed
In the summer of 1998, FBI agent Bob Hilland reluctantly picked up the phone to call the famous psychic John Edward. Bob didn’t expect much from the call, but he was working on an unsolvable cold case and had nowhere else to turn.
What Bob never imagined was that the call would lead to a shattering of all his preconceived notions, a huge break in the cold case, and an unlikely crime-solving partnership that spanned twenty-five years.
As Bob and John took on more cases together, they slowly learned how to rely on each other and trust their skills, ultimately finding not only justice for the crimes they solved, but resolution and healing in their own lives.
Centering on the investigation of the gruesome John Smith murders that rocked the nation, Chasing Evil is a heart-stopping story of murder, justice, and finding help in unexpected places.
Rating:
Review:
I picked up this book because I am interested in true crime and serial killers, and I’ve always been interested in psychics. I have followed John Edward for awhile with skepticism. Skepticism that I still has to be fair, even though this book is basically a resume for him. Overall though, this book was aggressively….fine.
I really liked the early chapters where we had John’s introduction to psychic abilities and how he meshed that with his actual life. And I like the chapters about Robert’s detective work and the true crime aspects. And, frankly, if even half of what John gave him is accurate then it’s pretty damn impressive. The case was fascinating and I loved the aspect of having dueling chapters. It felt part memoir, part true crime, part supernatural suspense. I really enjoyed it until about the halfway point.
After a certain point it just started to feel gratuitous. I began to wonder if Robert could solve any case without calling his favorite psychic. It started to seem less like a great collaboration and more like a detective who doesn’t really know what he’s doing without a psychic friend. Parts of it felt added in just to boost Robert’s ego. For example, at some point Robert is asked to assist with a lie detector test in a case. It’s not his case, he is only there to do a lie detector test. But then he gets all uppity that the detectives didn’t give him all the details of the case. It’s not your case though? Except that it was his case in the end? Which didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
If you’re a fan of true crime or a fan of John Edward then you’ll probably enjoy this book. I feel some parts of it could have been left out though.