With her energies focused on a baffling, vicious gang slaying and her personal life in shambles, Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor has a full plate. The last thing she needs is a whiz-kid grad student claiming to have stumbled upon a bizarre connection between several unsolved murders. The victims had nothing in common, yet each died by the same method, on the same date—a date that’s rapidly approaching again. And that leaves Petra with little time to unravel the twisted logic of a cunning predator who’s evaded detection for years—and whose terrible hour is once more at hand.