The Burning Girl

The first corpse was found hooded, bound, and naked, kneeling ona bare mattress in a seedy hotel room. This was no ordinary murder but rather the work of a killer driven by something special, somethingspectacular. The fact that the dead man was a convicted rapist recently released from prison only increases the bizarre nature of the gruesome crime ... and the police's reluctance to apprehend the perpetrator. It's the body count that troubles Detective Inspector Tom Thorne, as brutal slaying follows brutal slaying, each victim more deserving than the last. Though he has no sympathy for the dead, Thorne knows he must put an end to a cruelly calculating vigilante's bloody justice before time runs out -- and a horrifically efficient serial killer targets a life worth fighting for.

Luke Mullen, the missing teenage son of a former police officer, was last seen getting into a car with an older woman. No one knows whether he went willingly or was abducted, whether he's living or dead.

Then the videotape arrives . . .

On special assignment, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne is in charge of the investigation into Luke's disappearance. But it's the information that Tony Mullen, the boy's father, is not freely sharing that Thorne finds particularly disturbing—like the names of dangerous criminals who have openly threatened the tough ex-detective and his entire family. Something shocking and deadly may well be buried deep in old cases and past lives. But Thorne knows he doesn't have the luxury of time to dig—especially when a kidnapper brutally demonstrates that he is willing to kill.

Tom Thorne's career is on the skids. Having seriously crossed the line on his last case and depressed over the recent suspicious death of his father, the once ambitious police detective has been reduced to pushing papers . . . and is being encouraged to take a prolonged leave of duty.

But someone is stalking the city's most destitute citizens. Three homeless men have recently been kicked to death, each brutalized corpse discovered with a banknote pinned to its chest. With nothing to lose, Thorne volunteers to try to find the killer—taking to the streets he knows so well from his days as beat policeman and as a homicide detective, but this time joining the squalid ranks of life's rejects. In this harsh and harrowing netherworld, with its own rules and moral codes, a shocking link between the brutal crimes and a fifteen-year-old atrocity could end up costing Thorne what little life he has left.

Thorne looked at the picture, feeling the pulse quicken at the side of his neck. There were times when he couldn't see what was staring him in the face, but this, for better or worse, was his area of expertise. Thorne knew a dead man when he saw him.

Delivering the "death message." That's what cops call those harrowing moments when they must tell someone that a loved one has been killed. Now Detective Investigator Tom Thorne is receiving messages of his own: photographs of murder victims sent to his cell phone.

Who are the victims? Who is sending the photographs? And why is he sending them to Tom Thorne? The answer lies in the detective investigator's past, with a man he had once sent to prison for life. But even behind bars, the most dangerous psychopath Thorne has ever faced is still a master at manipulating others to do his dirty work for him. And Thorne must act fast because the photos keep on coming, and the killer's next target is someone the detective investigator knows very well. . . .