The Family Business

It's so exciting to start over. Deidre Jones should know, since she's doing just that. The first step was getting out of the mental hospital in St. Louis. There were those who tried to stop her. . .so she had to make them understand: Deirdre gets what she wants. And she wants her ex-husband, David, back. He's got a new wife and a little boy. He's forgotten what he and Deirdre once shared. But it will be easy enough to remind him now that she's moved in upstairs. . .

For David, his time with Deirdre was a dark chapter he was glad to see end. Their marriage was based on dangerous, obsessive passion--and when David left, he never looked back. He'd hoped it was the same for Deirdre, but her "neighborly" behavior soon proves him wrong. She's doing her best to manipulate herself back into his life: through his child, through seduction. . .through murder. Because Deirdre will do anything to get what can never be hers--and now David is the only one who can stop her. . .

When he stumbles across his only daughter's corpse in a deserted beachfront bungalow, devastated Ezekiel Cooper vows to find her murderer. What the former NYPD detective doesn't know is that there have been other victims. Women in Queens, Sarasota, Seattle. Women who seemingly had nothing in common, aside from a grisly fate at the hands of a chillingly clever stranger.

A computer programmer, a casting director, a call girl. The victims have nothing in common except the manner in which they spent their last night--wrapped in their own bed sheets in a bloody ritual of slow, agonizing death.

For NYPD Captain Thomas Horn, this adversary is unlike any he has met before. Methodical and highly skilled, the killer is always one step ahead, able to enter buildings without detection and leave no trace behind. To stop this deadly rampage, Horn must unlock the secrets of a cunning enemy who is saving his most shocking surprises for last. . .

"John Lutz knows how to make you shiver." --Harlan Coben

"Lutz ranks with such masters as Lawrence Block and Ed McBain." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

For the President of the United States, the daily horror of life in West Darfur, Sudan's anarchic killing fields, just hit heartbreakingly close to home. His beloved niece Lily, a nurse caring for refugees in the most war-torn region, has been targeted and savagely murdered by a corps of Janjaweed, fearsome government-backed militiamen.

The rash and vicious killing is a clear provocation, but any response will seriously destabilize the already-teetering region and threaten the security of the entire world. With the situation too explosive for diplomatic or military solutions, yet with the President and the public thirsting for revenge, America is out of options. Except one: Ryan Kealey.

Kealey, ex-Special Forces, former CIA, unrivaled counterterrorism expert, has been central to the war on terror for over a decade. But he's finished trying to save the world. After the Agency hung him out to dry--and let his lover die--it was easy for him to turn his back. They had nothing he wanted. Until now. For the government has revealed its trump card, the one thing Kealey will risk everything for.

Once back in the fold, Kealey's pursuit of Lily's killers unearths secrets and betrayals that shock even his war-tempered sensibilities and leave him with no-one to trust. On the lawless streets of Sudan, and at the highest levels of the American government, shadowy forces ignite a conflagration with unknowable global consequences.