NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
It came in a plain brown wrapper, no return address—an audiocassette recording of a horrifying, soul-lacerating scream, followed by the sound of a childlike voice chanting: “Bad love. Bad love. Don’t give me the bad love.” For Alex Delaware the tape is the first intimation that he is about to enter a living nightmare. Others soon follow: disquieting laughter echoing...

Milo and Alex investigate the murders of a young couple murdered in flagrante and left in a gruesome postmortem embrace, found in the half-built skeleton of a monstrously vulgar mansion in one of L.A.'s toniest neighborhoods. The female victim is unknown, the male eco-friendly architect Desmond Backer who disdains the sort of grandiose superstructure he is found in. When the investigation veers suddenly in a startling direction, it's the investigators...

A series of horrifying events occur in quick succession in the same upscale L.A. neighborhood. A backyard renovation unearths an infant's body, buried sixty years ago. And soon thereafter in a nearby park, another disturbingly bizarre discovery is made not far from the body of a young woman shot in the head. Helping LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis to link these eerie incidents is brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But even the good doctor's...