The body looked like all the others: a female bound at the wrists and ankles, blood-oozing welts criss-crossing her buttocks, crushed larynx; most of all, her palate was pierced with that wickedly shaped fishing hook for controlling her while she endured the unspeakable. Yet, one thing distinguished her from the other corpses: she was thawing in Gus Bolderjack's favorite chair. Bolderjack, a psychotherapist, had been an exceptional profiler who couldn't stay out of the action. He'd bait serial killers into stalking him, and then snare them by hook or by crook. Labeled hero by some and psycho shrink by others, one thing was clear: his methods worked. Then, after losing a feud with U. S. Attorney Carrie Sullivan-Bledsoe over a murderer's plea bargain he departed the field to join his lover in her high-end Sun Valley resort clinic, tending to the emotional needs of the rich and richer. That works for a while until Sullivan-Bledsoe, now a state attorney general, loses her son to a kidnapper at nearly the same time a powerful tabloid publisher's niece disappears. Bolderjack gets sucked into the fray, where he finds himself in a universe ruled by political ambition and intriguing, double-dealing characters, including those he's trying to help. The further he pushes into the web the more venom he encounters and the more he has to face his own shortcomings. To top it off he becomes the target of two gruesome serial killers sharing goals and a lust for vengeance, and the only way to save himself is to punch through the politics and get the killers before they get him.