He had always wanted to be famous. When he kidnapped two well-known rich kids it was headline news. Then one of them was found--dead. For such a high-profile case, they needed Alex Cross, police psychologist, and Jezzie Flanagan, a Secret Service agent, and even they were no match for the killer.

Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden -- especially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other way -- is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind Joe's state-owned home, he takes it personally. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he's had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile...

Newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to use his final days at the L.A. Times to write the definitive murder story of his career. Focusing on the case of Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer in jail after confessing to a brutal murder, Jack realizes that Winslow's so-called confession is bogus and that the real killer is operating completely below police radar--and with perfect knowledge of any move against him.

Leaving behind her Charleston forensic pathology practice to accept an assignment in New York City, Kay Scarpetta learns the story of an injured psychiatric patient who claims he was attacked by a stalker who was killing someone else at the time.