Arthur Johnson doesn't look like a murderous psychopath; he is a mild-mannered man who has never known how to talk to women. Years of loneliness has warped his mind turning his desire for a woman's love & respect into a pathological need for carefully controlled violence. Locked in the cellar of his building is the perfect willing victim a woman who can be murdered over & over again a woman who waits for Arthur every night... When a young scholar of psychopathic personalities moves in downstairs & Arthur's mannequin disappears where will he turn to satisfy his urgent craving for violence? The crime novel that won Rendell the first of her six Gold Dagger awards this is a haunting insight into the mind of a pathological criminal.