"Shane Gericke is the real deal." - Lee Child

Emily Thompson, the hard-charging Naperville Police officer who barely escaped with her life in Shane Gericke's series debut Blown Away, has been promoted to detective. She's fallen in love with Martin Benedetti, the county sheriff's homicide commander. They're building their dream house in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, where she lives and works. Life is good as she slowly recovers from her jagged wounds, both physical and emotional . . .

Until another serial killer decides to crash the party and match wits with a cop he believes should have died in the noose of the first killer's "Hangman" game.

In Cut to the Bone, a stone-cold multiple murderer is scheduled to die in the state electric chair in Naperville. He'd kidnapped an expectant mother, cut the baby out her womb, and gave it to his girlfriend, who'd wanted kids but didn't want to ruin her figure giving birth. The screams of the dying mother alerted nearby police officers, who gave chase. The killer smashed the infant against a tree trying to escape. The cops caught him anyway. He was tried, and now he'll fry.

But Emily Thompson's newest foe, who calls himself The Executioner, decides that he, not the cops, jury, state, governor, or a mere detective, is this man's god of life and death. So he attacks Emily to get inside the death house and free the baby - and mom-killer, even as the electrical generator winds up to deliver its killing punch.

An electrical killing punch that Emily takes full-force . . .

This fictional crime was inspired by a ghastly real-life one in the Chicago suburb of Addison. In November, 1995, Jacqueline Williams's boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, murdered a pregnant woman, Debra Evans, and cut her nearly full-term fetus from her body. To eliminate witnesses, he and Williams also murdered Evans's ten-year-old daughter, Samantha, and eight-year-old son, Joshua. A third child, Jordan, was spared because, they thought, children under the age of two couldn't be reliable witnesses.

The cut-out boy, named Eli, survived. Jordan and Eli are being raised by Evans's grandfather. Caffey and Williams were sentenced to death. That was commuted to life without parole when then-Illinois Governor George Ryan banned capital punishment in Illinois.