'Happy fifty-third birthday, Doctor. Welcome to the first day of your death. You ruined by life. And now I fully intend to ruin yours.'
Until the moment he reads those words, New York psychoanalyst Dr Frederick Starks has led a quiet and, so he believes, blameless life. But with them and the accompanying letter, his world is thrown into chaos. Suddenly, he is plunged into a dizzying battle of wits designed by a man who calls himself Rumplestiltskin.
The rules: within two weeks Starks must guess his tormentor's identity and the source of his fury. If he succeeds, he gets his life back. But if he fails, Rumplestiltskin will one by one destroy fifty-two of Dr Starks' beloved ones - friends, relatives, children - unless the good doctor agrees to kill himself.
As the days tick by and the layers of Starks' carefully constructed life are stripped from him, he quickly finds himself a powerless pawn in a psychopath's deadly game of vengeance . . .
