Alex Delaware Series, #20
Ballantine
April 2007
On Sale: March 27, 2007
Featuring: Alex Delaware; Milo Sturgis
480 pages ISBN: 0345452623 EAN: 9780345452627 Paperback (reprint) Add to Wish List
Itโs a story tailor-made for the nightly news: Dylan Meserve and Michaela Brand, young lovers and fellow acting students, vanish on the way home from a rehearsal. Three days later, the two of them are found in the remote mountains of Malibu -battered and terrified after a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor.
The details of the nightmarish event are shocking and brutal: The couple was carjacked at gunpoint by a masked assailant and subjected to a horrific regimen of confinement, starvation and assault.
But before long, doubts arise about the coupleโs story, and as forensic details unfold, the abduction is exposed as a hoax. Charged as criminals themselves, the aspiring actors claim emotional problems, and the court orders psychological evaluation for both.
Michaela is examined by Alex Delaware, who finds that her claims of depression and stress ring true enough. But they donโt explain her lies, and Alex is certain that there are hidden layers in this sordid psychodrama that even he hasnโt been able to penetrate.
Nevertheless, the case is closedโonly to be violently reopened when Michaela is savagely murdered. When the police look for Dylan, theyfind that heโs gone. Is he the killer or a victim himself? Casting their dragnet into the murkiest corners of L.A., Delaware and Sturgis unearth more questions than answersโincluding a host of eerily identical killings. What really happened to the couple who cried wolf? And what bizarre and brutal epidemic is infecting the city with terror, madness, and sudden, twisted death?
© 2003-2026