The Gift of Death

When former forensic artist Dr Kate Cramer discovers a 15-month-old child floating in the sea outside her Malibu home she is forced to revisit the past. A past that she thought she had left behind.

Seven years earlier she had been involved in the hunt and capture of serial killer Bobby Gleason, who stalked his victims, attacking and raping them in what the state prosecutor likened to a travelling circus of torture. After Gleason committed suicide while in prison everyone involved in the case thought they could get on with their lives - until each of the key players finds that they are being targeted in a macabre fashion.

The book is 95,000 words long, but is so full of suspenseful twists and turns that it reads like a dream – or your worst nightmare. It is not for the squeamish or the faint of heart. Please download the sample if you are in any doubt …

Opening lines:

She stared at the sea and thought of death. The sound of the waves rising and falling against the shoreline reminded Kate Cramer of the last breaths of a dying woman.

She tried to force the image from her brain, but it was no use. The sibilant whisper of the sea transported her back to the hospital where she had sat by the bedside of a young woman and listened to her die …

Kate had stepped away from her position as a forensic artist in order to have a quieter, steadier, more normal life. But all those victims out there - the mutilated, the raped, the abused, the butchered – did not have that luxury. They were defined by the crimes inflicted upon them, the scars etched into their bodies and their faces, marks that inscribed their bleak futures. The lucky ones were the ones who had died.