THE MURDER: The first victim is the college librarian who's bludgeoned to death by a massive avalanche of books. Accident? Investigator Whit Pynchon has a disturbing and different idea. THE MOTIVATION: Whit knows the murderer was really after is ex-wife. And he watches helplessly as both his daughter and his lover, newspaper editor Anna Tyree, are abducted by a madman playing out an elaborate plan to punish Whit — before he kills him. THE MANHUNT: Have the women in Whit's life been sacrificed to a nightmare scenario of revenge? The answer could come too late. But Whit's got to find it — because he may have already lost it all.