In the suburbs of Connecticut, a carpenter embarks on a gruesome killing spree
While she’s preparing dinner for her husband, Mrs. Porter runs out of lemons. Driving to the supermarket through the achingly quaint downtown area of suburban Putnam Wells, she yearns for life in New York City. The Porters moved to Connecticut because it was supposed to be safer, quieter, more predictable—until that afternoon, when she returns home and finds a madman waiting with a butcher knife in his hand. He doesn’t just kill Mrs. Porter—he takes his time, leaving behind a gory scene that would horrify even the hardest New York cop.
The killer is Paul White, a local carpenter whose wife knows nothing about his thirst for blood; Mrs. White is an innocent who lives to make her husband and daughter happy. As she begins to see shadows of Paul’s vicious side, she will learn just how twisted love can be.
Andrew Klavan (b. 1954) is a highly successful author of thrillers and hard-boiled mysteries. Born in New York City, Klavan was raised on Long Island and attended college at the University of California at Berkeley. He published his first novel, Face of the Earth, in 1977, and continued writing mysteries throughout the eighties, finding critical recognition when The Rain (1988) won an Edgar Award for best new paperback.
Besides his crime fiction, Klavan has distinguished himself as an author of supernatural thrillers, most notably Don’t Say a Word (1991), which was made into a film starring Michael Douglas. He has two ongoing series: Weiss and Bishop, a private-eye duo who made their debut in Dynamite Road (2003), and The Homelanders, a young-adult series about teenagers who fight radical Islam. Besides his fiction, Klavan writes regular opinion pieces for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other national publications. He lives in Southern California.