Abigail Campano experiences a mother's worst nightmare when
she comes home to find a stranger has brutally attacked her
daughter Emma -- and is still standing over the girl's body
with a knife in his hand. When he approaches Abigail, a
violent struggle ensues and she kills him.
As Will Trent, an agent from the Georgia Bureau of
Investigation, helps Atlanta detectives piece together what
happened, he finds some of the crime scene details don't
make sense in the scenario. Then Paul Campano, Emma's
father, begins to insist that the murdered teen is not his
daughter, but her friend Kayla. Emma has a birthmark that
is not on the victim's body. Suddenly, the murder case
becomes a murder-kidnapping and the search is on for a
missing girl. Not only that, but the young man Abigail
killed may have been a friend of Emma and Kayla's who was
actually trying to help them.
Detective Faith Mitchell assists Will as the GBI takes over
the case. Will has recently investigated the Atlanta Police
Department, which resulted in the firing of several
detectives and a commander's forced retirement. The
commander just happened to be Evelyn Mitchell, Faith's
mother. Faith and her colleagues want nothing to do with
Will, but she is given no choice. Besides, there's no time
for personal grudges in the race to save Emma, and Will
seems to have a knack for seeing things from a different
angle than everyone else.
This book begins with a horrifying life-or-death struggle
and keeps the tension ratcheted up all the way to the end.
The importance of each passing hour in a case such as this
heightens the suspense, especially when readers are as in
the dark as the investigators as to where Emma is and what
is happening to her. Abigail's guilt over what she did and
her worry about Emma is heartbreaking, and there are some
disturbing glimpses into the world of today's teens. Will
and Faith's partnership develops slowly and naturally from
dislike to mutual respect, and Will's wry sense of humor
provides some much-needed lighter moments. This story isn't
always easy to read, but it's nearly impossible to put down.
With its gracious
homes and tree-lined streets, Ansley Park is one of
Atlanta’s most desirable neighborhoods. But in one
gleaming mansion, in a teenager’s lavish bedroom, a girl
has been savagely murdered. And in the hallway, her
horrified mother stands amid shattered glass, having
killed her daughter’s attacker with her bare hands.
Detective Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of
Investigation is here only to do a political favor; the
murder site belongs to the Atlanta police. But Trent soon
sees something that the cops are missing, something in the
trail of blood, in a matrix of forensic evidence, and in
the eyes of the shell-shocked mother. Within minutes,
Trent is taking over the case—and adding another one to
it. He is sure that another teenage girl is missing, and
that a killer is on the loose.
Armed with only
fleeting clues, teamed with a female cop who has her own
personal reasons for hating him, Trent has enemies all
around him—and a gnawing feeling that this case, which
started in the best of homes, is cutting quick and deep
through the ruins of perfect lives broken wide-open: where
human demons emerge with a vengeance.
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