Attorney Mike Sweeney is the cherry on top of Dana Carrington's successful business trip to North Carolina. Not only is Mike attractive, charming, and driven, he's also from Chicago like Dana. After a chance encounter, they spend an evening getting to know each other over dinner, at the theater, and back in Dana's hotel room. The night couldn't be more perfect. Until Mike leans over and whispers calmly that he's going to kill her.

When Dana wakes up from a drugged sleep hours later she's bound and gagged. She has no choice but to listen as Mike explains: in one year Dana will die. If she goes to the police it will be much sooner. He shows her pictures of two gruesomely murdered women to prove it.

This is a gift, he continues. "You have a full year to do everything you ever wanted or imagined" with no responsibilities, no repercussions. In his mind he is not Dana's tormentor but her rescuer, saving her from a mediocre life spent "merely existing." He says you're welcome with another syringe full of sedatives.

Dana returns to Chicago badly shaken, and her terror grows when Sweeney begins to stalk her, sending flowers to her office and showing up in the car next to her. After that last incident causes Dana to get in an accident, her concerned friend, Erin, persuades Dana to enlist the help of private investigator Carter Mays -- as much on the strength of his impressive gym bod as his success busting the real estate-drug ring of the previous book.

Soon after Mays gets involved Sweeney's behavior escalates into ever scarier, more violent behavior and the resourceful, ripped detective must act quickly -- but carefully -- to save his client.

At about 60 pages shorter than its prequel, Alan Cupp's SCHEDULED TO DIE is snappier and pleasanter to read. Still, much of the text is devoted to unnecessary, awkward exposition.

Cupp could leave a little more action to the imagination and instead take time to anchor the story in its characters and setting. Every once in awhile he shows his ability in this area, as at the beginning when he sets the scene of Dana's last worry-free evening for awhile. SCHEDULED TO DIE is sort, direct, and evocative.

Still, SCHEDULED TO DIE is a mystery with a moral. It tells the story about what happens when good intentions go demented, and explores the strength (and relationships) that people can find in the most terrible, unlikely situations.