A Darkness Within

The mutilated body of a teenage student is found in a wood south of the city. She is the fourth victim of a murderer who scrubs the corpses clean with bleach before dumping them to be recovered. He leaves no trace evidence, and has no apparent motive. He is the police’s worst nightmare; a serial killer. Teri Denton is a DCI in the recently formed MIT – Major Incident Team – at Hanford. With no leads to follow Teri contacts criminal psychologist Dr Paul Brand, who is reputedly able to ‘mind hunt’ the type of homicidal psychopath that becomes a repeater. Brand has a dubious gift. He is able to think his way into a killer’s mind and, more often than not develop a profile and provide investigative suggestions for the police to follow. But this killer is clever, organized, and knows all the moves. He considers himself better than the police at the ultimate game. He knows how they work, and believes that he is au fait with the methodology that they and the profiler will undoubtedly employ to try to apprehend him. To his mind, Brand is totally inept to believe that behaviour always reflects personality that can be evaluated and lead in the right direction. As they will soon appreciate, he is not like anyone they have come up against before. Teri and Paul use psychological warfare to draw the killer out, and to their regret are eminently successful. To the perpetrator – dubbed the Phantom – this is gratifying, and so he decides to change the rules of what he sees as combat and engage with them head on. Now it’s personal. Genre: Psychological Thriller | Crime