In the late '60s Jerusalem was dubbed 'The Butcher's Theatre'. Now, decades later, the City of Peace is a butcher's theatre once more. The first victim is a young Arab girl. Her obscenely mutilated corpse is found in some bushes on the slopes of Mount Scopus. She has been drugged with heroin, carved up with chilling care and skill. The mixture of calculation and frenzy sends a shockwave through a society where warfare and terrorism are everyday facts of life - but where sex murders and serial killers are virtually unknown

Been a while since I had me a nice little whodunit,' Milo Sturgis tells psychologist Alex Delaware. Though there's definitely nothing nice about the brutal tableau behind the yellow crime scene tape. On a lonely lovers lane in the hills of Los Angeles, a young couple lies murdered in a car. Each bears a single gunshot wound to the head. But the female victim has also been impaled by a metal spike......

The cheerful chaos of a Californian schoolyard is shattered one autumn day by gunfire. No children are hurt, but a sniper is shot down - and psychologist Dr Alex Delaware is called in to help the kids cope with the trauma. Then comes another stunning surprise: the identity of the sniper. And Delaware is intrigued by the chance to explore intimately the forces that created such a twisted personality.