--SPOILER ALERT--


Zebrun's novel is short and tightly written. The story revolves around Daniel Caruso, a closeted man who becomes inextricably entangled in a world of violence, sexual adventure, and subterfuge when he receives a gruesome package in the mail. The package contains a severed body part belonging to his most recent one-night-stand, an attractive male firefighter. Daniel soon realizes that rather than the sophisticated sexual risk-taker he imagines himself to be, he is really a vulnerable family man with a secret and a lot to lose.

Zebrun is adept at the art of understated menace, allowing the reader to follow Daniel as he is drawn further and further from the safety of his life with his family into an alien world that is (because of the stalker/killer's attentions) becoming more and more terrifying to him. The story unfolds in the details, each one drawing Daniel and the killer closer to the final confrontation.

I have an enduring fascination with serial killer novels that has lead me through a fair number of police procedurals and detective novels. The surprise ending in this book sets it apart from the serial killer convention. Not only does the killer escape, but he kills Daniel in the final chapter of the novel, which is completely unexepected in a first-peron narrative. ( )