Chasing Evil - Shocking Crimes, Supernatural Forces, and an FBI Agent's Search for Hope and Justice by Robert Hilland, John Edward and Natasha Stoynoff might end up being my favourite audiobook of 2026, although we still have a few months before the end of the year.
Written from the first-person perspective of Robert (Bob) Hilland, Chasing Evil is largely about his career as an FBI Agent. In the late 1990s, Hilland was working on the cold case of serial killer John Smith when he noticed the rise of John Edward's popularity as a psychic on the radio.
A resolute skeptic convinced of Smith's guilt but desperate for new leads on the case, Hilland reached out and made an appointment to see psychic medium John Edward. The year was 1998, and he took along a number of items belonging to a missing woman from the case and threw in some control items from female colleagues as a test of sorts. At the end of the meeting, Hilland's entire world view had shifted. John Edward identified the control items immediately and communicated information that he couldn't possibly have known, making Bob a believer in the spirit world in a matter of hours.
John agreed to work with Bob on the condition that his involvement was off the books and completely off the record. This surprised Hilland - thinking John would want to capitalise on the involvement to boost his reputation and profile - but readily agreed. We're told that this reluctance of Edward's came from a fear of disappointing or embarrassing his father who worked in the NYPD and who had asked him not to work with Police.
Reading a book about their collaboration naturally made me wonder how they went from keeping John's involvement secret to his agreement to be the subject and co-author of this book, but unfortunately this change was never explained. In the face of this glaring omission I can only assume John felt more comfortable for his work with the FBI to become public following his father's death, but this is pure supposition.
Hilland worked on a number of cases in his career but it's fair to say John Smith was his white whale, and was responsible for multiple deaths and disappearances. Chasing Evil was published in 2025, and I had to exercise a huge amount of self discipline and restraint not to look up the cases he was investigating to find out what happened. Instead, I waited for Hilland to tell me as the book unfolded and ended up listening at additional times during the day in order to hasten the process.
The audiobook is narrated by Hilland and Edward and early on there seemed to be a lot of sound effects added - creepy music, the sound of writing on a whiteboard - but thankfully these featured less and less as the audiobook went on. Co-author and collaborator Natasha Stoynoff helped to bring both of their experiences together in the book which felt cohesive and flowed exceptionally well.
Throughout his career, John's psychic ability helped Bob find bodies, make arrests and close cases. They worked so closely together that after 25 years they became as close as brothers. It was a touching relationship developed over a shared interest in fighting against evil and I got the sense they chased evil together; making the title entirely appropriate.
I read and enjoyed Crossing Over by John Edward in 2011 and have seen him perform live in Melbourne several times. I eventually stopped going or reading any more of his books because I found his delivery style a little arrogant. He's so confident in his gift, and he receives and delivers his information so quickly that he often comes across to me as insensitive. With so many people wanting readings and so many spirits hounding him to be heard, I imagine the pressure to be something akin to being an author in a signing line with a massive queue and a tonne of fans on his side of the desk pushing and shoving for his attention. In an environment like this he's unlikely to stop and pause and have meaningful interactions with a select few people, but prioritise quantity over quality but the end result can seem a little uncaring. Not long after finishing this book I saw that John Edward is returning to Melbourne in December and after reading this book and admiring his work again, it felt like the perfect time to go and see him. I can't wait.
Chasing Evil by Robert Hilland and John Edward is highly recommended for fans of true crime, skeptics and believers alike and I loved it!
Carpe Librum!
