Anna Batory is a smart, tough, ambitious video freelanceer whose nightlife consists of riding the mean streets of L.A. with her motley crew of cameramen, looking for hot stories she can tape and sell to the TV station offering the highest bid. One eventful night, she and her crew tape a raid by animal-rights activists, then hurry to the scene of a suicide, where a high-school kid has just jumped off a balcony after a drug overdose. The next morning, one of Anna's crew members turns up dead, sliced, diced, and beaten to a pulp by an obvious madman. Anna hooks up with the dead high-school kid's dad, Jake Harper, a former L.A. cop who wants to avenge his son's death. He and Anna soon find puzzling links between young Harper's death and the death of Anna's crewman. The tension spirals higher as Jake and Anna track down clues, circling ever closer to the killer. Well-orchestrated suspense, nonstop action, plenty of unexpected twists, and a superb climax will keep readers riveted. Sandford, whose Prey series has been a huge commercial success, offers up a feisty new heroine and plenty of human interest in this slick, sleek, nightmarish thriller.

The pseudonymous Sandford takes a break from his popular series featuring top Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport (Sudden Prey, 1996, etc.) to offer a thriller whose gutsy heroine pursues the psychopath who's stalking her around the Los Angeles basin. A midwestern farm girl whose musical talents proved insufficient to gain her a concert pianist's career, Anna Batory (now nearing 40) works at an unusual trade. With partner Creek (a gentle giant who did time for running marijuana from Mexico), she heads a television camera crew that prowls L.A. County from midnight until dawn on the lookout for airworthy stories that can be sold to local stations or the networks. Soon after an eventful evening – the freelancers provided exclusive film coverage of the dramatic death of a teenager who jumped from a hotel ledge while high on speed – the body of Jason O'Brien, a part-time videocam operator for Anna who filmed the suicide, washes up on the Santa Monica beach. Anna meets Jake Harper, an ex-sheriff's deputy turned lawyer and the father of the boy who committed suicide. He believes that there's a connection between the deaths of Jason and his son and that Anna may be in danger. After her home is broken into and Creek is badly wounded by a pistol-wielding assailant, she joins forces with Jake. Desperate to make a connection that could lead them to her anonymous pursuer, Anna (by now romantically involved with Jake) wonders whether her lost love, a composer who's back on the West Coast courtesy of a UCLA fellowship, might be the guilty party. Instead, a violent climactic confrontation that costs Anna dearly reveals that her manic nemesis is not from the daydreamy past but the nightside present. A credibly gallant woman on the trail of a notably demented weirdo in a host of after-hours venues – a winning and suspense-filled combination for the ultraprofessional Sandford.