The first novel featuring true-crime writer Marie Lightfoot.
Whether real like Ted Bundy, or imagined like Hannibal Lecter, few killers of our time are in the same league as Raymond Raintree.
As he stands flanked by lawyers in a Florida courtroom, waiting to be convicted for the murder of young Natalie Mae McCullen, Marie Lightfoot is taking it all in. A small, gutsy blonde renowned for her true-crime bestsellers, Marie knows the graphic and disturbing case will make her best book yet - for Raintree's crime, vile beyond imagining, is also impossible to turn away from. But there is something about the case - and Raintree's involvement - that bothers her.
No one knows where Raintree, a man as slight and immature as a preteen boy, took Natalie after he abducted her. No one knows how Natalie, a bright, independent girl with no fear of the dark, could be lured into a stranger's boat on a lonely waterway. And only one witness saw a man who may have been Raintree, motoring along in a water taxi on the night Natalie disappeared.
Even if the police can't provide the answers, Marie intends to leave no loose ends. Starting with a prison meeting with Raintree, the steely nerved writer follows a twisted path that leads to Natalie's parents, to a coincidence that doesn't quite gel. The deeper the steely-nerved writer digs, the more she must face the dark recesses of her own past - and the bottomless darkness inside a killer heart of pure evil . . .
