Psychologist Alex Delaware and Homicide Detective Milo Sturgis face one of their most baffling and troubling cases in this riveting thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling “master of suspense” (Los Angeles Times).

It begins with what seems like a particlarly malignant case of envy. Alben Opfer, a gifted, self-motivated eighteen-year-old comes to Los Angeles with big plans: enrollment at an elite private school, followed by admission to an equally prestigious college, and, finally, a career in Hollywood. All that ends when his body is found on a university campus, shot to death, and in a bizarre display of cruel triumph, stabbed post-mortem.

Suspicions falls on Alben's estranged half brother, whose troubled past stands in stark contrast to Alben's promising future. Then another victim is murdered in the same distinctive way. And another. And another.

Maddeningly, there seems to be no link among the victims. Males and females, they span a wide age range and come from different worlds. Yet someone has doomed them to dying horribly.

Alex and Milo find themselves peeling back layers of L.A. life, traveling in and out of the shadows, as they hunt for a psychopath who operates out of pure malice.