At last, he came to the edge of the pine forest. Ahead was the parking lot. There was no doubt in Kane's mind. The killer had parked in this lot and walked to the murder scene. The killer would have parked at the very edge of the parking lot, of that Kane was certain. If only the parking lot had been equipped with security cameras. Of course, it had not. Deputy Sheriff Adam Kane has returned to his boyhood home in hopes of regaining some of the humanity stripped from him in the decades of waging war against his fellow man. Instead of the peace and tranquility he hopes to find, he is confronted with an evil resurrected from his past--a human monster who is killing the children of the small Tennessee town. Kane knows monsters. He has battled them in Vietnam, the Philippines, Africa, Afghanistan, Columbia, and Mexico. He has seen the abyss and the menacing darkness that dwells within it. Now, he must ask the questions, "What makes a man a monster?" and "What makes a monster a man?" Step aside, Hannibal Lector. Your successor has arrived. What's worse--a fiendish serial killer or a pitiless mercenary killer? Find out in this gore-splattered thriller. After a series of gruesome--and nearly evidence-free-murders--rock a small Tennessee town, will Kane's forensics skills and intuition point him toward a community pillar. The author ingeniously renders the murderer's planning process and Kane's equally meticulous crime-scene sleuthing.... Kane frowns on the senseless massacre of innocents, but he's comfortable with the purposeful massacre of innocents--for example, when he sends a "message" by murdering the wife, mother and children of a drug dealer suspected of killing a DEA agent's family. There's not much to distinguish Kane from the psycho he's pursuing, except that he takes a workmanlike pride--ather than a lascivious pleasure--in his killing, which is constrained and rationalized by the nihilistic ethic of professionalism imparted by his shadowy government mentor. -Kirkus Discoveries