Belinda Bauer

Jack's in charge, said his mother as she disappeared up the road to get help. I won't be long. Now eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters wait on the hard shoulder in their stifling, broken-down car, bickering and whining and playing I-Spy until she comes back. But their mother doesn't come back. She never comes back. And after that long, hot summer's day, nothing will ever be the same again. Three years later, Jack's fifteen now and still in charge...

"The dead can't speak to us," Professor Madoc had said. That was a lie--because the body Patrick Fort is examining in anatomy class is trying to tell him all kinds of things. His Asperger's syndrome already makes life strange enough for him without having to solve a possible murder on top of it--especially when no one believes a crime has even taken place.

The eight-year-old boy had vanished from the car and, as if by slick, sick magic, had been replaced by a note on the steering wheel reading, "You don't love him." At the height of summer a dark shadow falls across Exmoor; more children are stolen, each disappearance marked only by the same brutal accusation. No explanations, no ransom demands, and no hope. But - still reeling from a personal tragedy - does Policeman Jonas Holly stand any chance...

Crime reporter Eve Singer's career is on the downward slope when a spate of bizarre murders-each carefully orchestrated and advertised like performance art-begin in her territory. Covering these very public crimes revives her byline, and when the killer contacts Eve to discuss her coverage of his crimes, she is suddenly on the inside of the biggest murder investigation of the decade. But as the killer becomes increasingly obsessed with her, Eve...