Two separate murders, strikingly similar in their grisly particulars, bring psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Sturgis together once again to pool their crime-solving skills in the hunt for a homicidal maniac. But they're shocked to discover that another deranged murderer may be their best chance of cracking the case. Ardis Peake has been locked away in an asylum for the criminally insane for the last sixteen years, ever since he committed the horrifying massacre as a teenager that made him infamous--and earned him the nickname "Monster." A pariah even among his fellow inmates, Peake is a lost cause to most of his doctors, and only staff psychologist Claire Argent took a keen interest in treating the caged killer--until she turned up brutally slain in the trunk of her car. It is a death made all the more disturbing by the fact that it was seemingly predicted by Monster.

While Milo searches for a connection between the killing of a struggling actor and Dr. Argent's nearly identical murder, Alex wonders what spurred the reportedly shy psychologist's intense fascination with the dangerously insane. But Claire Argent's personal life proves as barren as the empty home she left behind, and neither her ex-husband nor her colleagues can fill in the cryptic blanks. Only Ardis Peake, whose barely functioning mind lies buried deep in psychosis, seems somehow inexplicably linked to the world from which he's sealed off. And when he foresees another violent double slaying, Alex and Milo fear that their only hope of finding the truth--and stopping the bloodshed--may be to follow a strange and menacing path into the dark heart and twisted psyche of a madman.