Author, investigative reporter, and television hostess Maxine Revere has been trying to discover what happened to Jim and Sandy Palazzolo, a couple who visited New York City to celebrate their second honeymoon. They checked into a New York hotel one year ago, and they checked out a few days later, never to be seen or heard from again. The local police have put this matter into their cold case files. The couple's children have hired Max to find out what happened to them.

Serial killer Adam Bachman normally preyed on young women, and Jim and Sandy don't fall anywhere in the parameters of his m.o., but some statements that Bachman has made lead Max to believe that this killer knows what happened to the older couple, or was even responsible for their disappearance. She has a very short time to gather evidence that will prove her hunch, and this throws her into a secondary investigation of Bachman. She's stepping on a lot of toes at the Department of Justice.

COMPULSION is the second book in a series featuring Maxine "Max" Revere. Max is so dedicated to clients and the truth that she gets in a lot of trouble with both good guys and bad guys. She is such an asset to her television show on NET, Maximum Exposure, that the station has hired David Kane, an ex-Army Ranger, to be Max's body guard, personal assistant, and anything else needed to keep her out of trouble. David has become Max's best friend and only confidant. Max has recently hired Riley Butler as an assistant. David doesn't particularly like Riley because she is too headstrong and impatient, and those are the assets Max sees in the young woman. Max has recently started a romantic relationship with San Francisco PD Detective Nick Santini; they met while working on a case involving some of Max's high school friends. Prior to Nick, she had been in a long term liaison with FBI Supervisorial Special Agent Marco Lopez, who is based in Florida, and Marco isn't giving her up easily. Max's entire life is told in bits and pieces in each of the Revere stories; she has some very sad and heartbreaking childhood memories.

Max eventually connects her cold case with Bachman's activities, and his collaborators, but getting evidence is putting her life in grave danger, as well as the lives of anyone associated with her. Instead of Max finding the evildoers, she soon realizes they are giving her a trail of crumbs to follow so she is always in their sights.

Allison Brennan is a master of macabre and chilling story lines featuring fully resolved characters and well-paced action. COMPULSION is a compulsive, riveting work of crime fiction at its very best.