A reclusive writer is dead. & her final manuscript has disappeared.. . Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her & makes threatening obscene phone-calls. Terrified Beryl flees to Key West
- but eventually she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in.. . Thus begins for Dr Kay Scarpetta the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre. Why would Beryl open the door to someone who brutally slashed & then nearly decapitated her? Did she know her killer? Adding to the intrigue is Beryl's enigmatic relationship with a prize-winning author & the disappearance of her own manuscript. As Scarpetta retraces Beryl's footsteps an investigation that begins in the laboratory with microscopes & lasers leads her deep into a nightmare that soon becomes her own. For more about Patricia Cornwell & her books visit her website at www.patricia-cornwell.com