Gus Wheatley thinks he's found success. The youngest lawyer ever to grab the helm of Seattle's most prominent law firm, nothing can interfere with his meteoric rise to the top - until his wife vanishes.
Beth dropped off their six-year-old daughter at the youth centre one afternoon, and no one has seen her since. Her disappearance comes just as FBI profilers are called in to examine a bizarre pattern of brutal serial murders. The FBI dubs them "bookend killings", as the killer seems to be striking his victims in pairs: first two men, then two women.
But this is just the beginning of the nightmare for Gus. Soon Seattle police fashion a theory that leaves two horrifying possibilities: either Beth is the killer's latest victim . . . or she is his willing accomplice.
