NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR NOVEL.
Originally published by Jove/Bantam as a paperback original. Also published in hardcover in the UK by Headline Books.
A classic novel of suspense taken to the ultimate limit by a woman who no longer has anything to lose.
First her husband killed their children, then himself. Now she's on her own, and she's bent on making sure it never happens to another woman. It's too late for her...she's already damaged. She's already caught in the depths of despair where only taking the law into her hands holds out any sort of relief. Yet when she stops the evil she's felt compelled to commit, the murders continue. Someone is a copycat, pinning crimes on her, stalking her, teasing her with his devious plan. She can't make him stop. There may be no way out of the trap she's created out of loss, out of desperation.
There's another problem--she's falling in love with the detective who is in charge of tracking her down. Life is a complex series of paradoxes, a spiral of fear and murder where nothing is as it seems.
"A unique knife-edged page-turner, as dark as the alleys of the Houston demi-monde in which the moral twists of its inventive plot play out. Don't miss this one." - Paul Wilson, author of SIBS and THE SELECT.
"Taut, riveting...The tension is pulled as a noose around the reader's neck." -Robert W. Walker, author of PRIMAL INSTINCT
From the Author
The research that went into this novel include interviews with exotic dancers and an interview with a Captain of Detectives in Houston, Texas near where the story is set. It was my intention to play off a female serial killer against a male copycat killer and the interaction that takes place between them. What if the serial killer wanted to stop, but the copycat wouldn't let her? This dynamic was an interesting contrast I wanted to explore with the woman they called Shadow, and the copycat who mocked and copied her crimes, Son.