Ted Bundy. Hannibal Lecter. Florida killer Raymond Raintree has been compared to the most notorious of monsters, be they real or imagined. But the crime Raintree stands trial for -- the brutal murder of Natalie Mae McCullen -- is all too real. For gutsy true-crime writer Marie Lightfoot, a reluctant celebrity in her own right, the case is the stuff of her next surefire bestseller. But some of the evidence has made Marie wonder...and she is lured to retrace the dark night on a lonely waterway where Natalie disappeared. The deeper the steely-nerved writer digs, the more she must face the dark recesses of her own past -- and the bottomless darkness inside a killer's heart of pure evil...
Sex, violence, evil, and betrayal -- the shocking murder case splashed across the Florida headlines has all the right elements for true-crime writer Marie Lightfoot's next bestseller. And tell the tale she does, in a book that reveals the secrets of a love affair gone fatally wrong. But there are disturbing twists, which leave Marie sensing in her gut that something does not jibe. Twist number one: the accused is a man of the cloth, who has allegedly killed his wife in collusion with his lover. Twist number two: a pair of young girls find the body in an abandoned mansion, adding the death of innocence to the magnitude of the crime. Twist number three: a shattering conviction turns the case on its ear. And the ultimate blow: for the first time in her career, Marie fails to win the the killer's confidence during a jailhouse interview. Suddenly, she knows with certainty there ia more to the story than even she realized -- and her conscience won't let her rest. Then an unexpected visitor -- a shock in itself for the reclusive writer -- confesses something that not even the police know. The revelation may he the missing piece in a terrifying puzzle -- evidence that teaches Marie a bone-chilling lesson as threatening danger slowly encircles her: to err is human, but underestimating the criminal mind can be deadly. Nancy Pickard premiered gutsy Marie Lightfoot in the national bestseller The Whole Truth, and kicked off a thrilling new series with "an intriguing story, fascinatingly told" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Now, Pickard once again "pushes the presumed limits of [crime fiction]" (Los Angeles Times) as she sends this complex heroine into a jagged maze with one destination: the darkest realm of human nature.
Receiving a disturbing e-mail from someone who claims to be a killer much like those she writes about, true-crime author Marie Lightfoot is horrified when he proposes collaborating with him by having her pre-write her own murder. Reprint.