Falling » (Reprint)

Christopher Pike is the bestselling author of The Season of Passage, The Cold One, The Blind Mirror, and many other horror novels. Pike's young adult fiction, which made him a household name, includes The Last Vampire, Remember Me, Chain Letter, and the Alosha series, Alosha, The Shaktra, and The Yanti. Christopher Pike lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Love hurts.

While FBI agent Kelly Feinman is recovering from an attack by a serial killer called the "Acid Man," her husband leaves her. Physically and emotionally scarred by the murderer, Kelly feels she will never be the same. She is cut off not only from her husband and child, but also from her fellow FBI agents, who see her as a rogue for going after the Acid Man alone.

Love is hell.

Matt Connor's love for his girlfriend, Amy, is so intense that he feels he is in heaven when he is with her. When Amy leaves him for another man, Matt is shattered. In agony, he plans a diabolical scheme that first calls for him to disappear from the face of the earth. His revenge will make Amy wish she had never been born.

Love can heal.

Matt's act of vengeance puts him in charge of Amy's infant son. He discovers a soothing warmth in Jimmy's eyes that makes him wonder if Amy's betrayal truly merited wrecking the child's life. Yet Matt's heart cannot be made whole until he has won Amy back.

Kelly cannot be made whole until she understands the depth of evil that lurks behind the Acid Man. Ironically, to rid herself and the world of her nemesis, she must seek out Matt Connor, a wanted man she has been ordered to bring to justice.

Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Pike's gripping thriller pays homage to Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter novels, particularly in the character of FBI agent Kelly Feinman, who fills the Clarice Starling role. An unlikely law-enforcement agent, Kelly was an academic drafted by the bureau as a consultant based on her graduate thesis on mythology. Kelly puts her expertise to use on a particularly savage case, that of a man dubbed "the Acid Killer," who has sent the Feds DVDs of his sadistic murders of women he believes have been unfaithful. Her research leads her to a promising suspect, but her desire to solve the case on her own places her life in jeopardy. Pike (The Cold One) deftly interweaves this plot with the elaborate, Edmund Dantes like revenge scheme of Matt Connor, a California man who was himself betrayed by the woman he loved. While some of the action sequences involving Kelly strain credibility, the intricate, thoughtful plot offers enough fresh variations on the serial-killer theme to keep readers turning the pages. (Feb.)