A teenage runaway's body is found in the basement of a rancid tenement building in the desolate, dangerous North Philly district dubbed the Badlands. The inexplicable cause of death: drowning. Months later, this dormant homicide case stirs back to life. A confession to the bizarre murder sends Philadelphia police detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano rushing to make an arrest. But what they find will chill these hardened veterans to the bone. As the body count grows, a terrifying design literally takes shape. Pieces of a gruesome puzzle are being set into place by a madman using the city as his game board. His playthings are the innocent, and his opponents-and pawns-are Byrne and Balzano, who must, before time runs out, decipher the truth about a shadowy house of horrors and its elusive master.

Author: Richard Montanari
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 08/25/2009
Series: Jessica Balzano & Kevin Byrne #4
Pages: 416
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 6.86h x 4.28w x 1.11d
ISBN: 9780345492432

About the Author
Richard Montanari is a novelist, screenwriter, and essayist. His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and scores of other national and regional publications. He is the OLMA- winning author of the internationally acclaimed thrillers Merciless, The Skin Gods, The Rosary Girls, Kiss of Evil, Deviant Way, and The Violet Hour.