a. l. malcom

In the United States, over 680,000 rapes occur each year.

But that number is merely a statistic, and this novel isn’t about statistics. It is about “what if?”

What if there were someone who had the means and opportunity to mete out justice to those rapists the police couldn’t touch?

What if she encased these men in concrete, posed them as copies of famous statues and set them up in prominent locations in the city?

What if she taunted the media, the police — even the Mayor — with accusatory and descriptive letters, each one signed “Medusa”?

It is said, “vengeance is a dish best served cold,” and in the case confronting Lieutenant Caitlin McHugh of the Buchanan Police Department, it appears to be served in the cold shroud of these concrete-entombed corpses. A woman calling herself “Medusa” is on a killing spree, and, like her namesake, is literally turning men to stone. When the first of the victims turns out to be Earnest Waverly, a sadistic rapist and murderer who had escaped their custody five years earlier, even Caitlin and her team begin to question their motivation for trying to capture this vigilante.

Still, they know as sworn law enforcement officers, they are duty bound to pursue this murderer, especially after her victims begin to deviate from the original corps of rapists to include a more cosmopolitan male clientele. On the convoluted path leading to the killer, Caitlin finds herself sidetracked by the shootings of two police officers, as well as the concealment of critical files by members of her own Department.

Female readers may well find themselves surreptitiously cheering for the killer; while male readers — especially those who view women as mere objects for their personal enjoyment — well, they just may begin sleeping with one eye open.