LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis has summoned his friend, psychologist Alex Delaware, to the fashionable gallery where a promising young artist has been brutally garrotted on the night of her first major showing. What makes it a strange case is the lack of any obvious motive, and the luridly careful staging of the murder scene - which immediately suggests to Alex the taunting modus operandi of a serial killer.

Alex's suspicion is borne out when he compares notes with Milo's associates, Petra Connor and Eric Stahl. The Hollywood cops are investigating the vicious death of Baby Boy-Lee, a noted blues guitarist, fatally stabbed after a late-night set at a local club. What links Baby Boy's murder with that of painter Juliet Kipper is the shadowy presence of an abrasive fanzine writer. This alias-shrouded critic's love-the-art/disdain-the-artist philosophy and his morbid fascination with the murders leads Alex and the detectives to suspect they're facing a new breed of celebrity stalker - one who's made cold-blooded murder his own chosen art form.

Leaving on Translink bookshelf