Carmen Palma is a homicide detective in Houston, Texas; a strong female in a world still almost exclusively male. When Houston is rocked by a wave of unbelievably vicious sexual murders, Palma takes the lead in the investigation. The pattern that emerges in the killings is unique--way out of line with traditional violent-crime psychology. Palma's instincts tell her that the victims expected their torture. It was almost as if they had helped choreograph every blow of their own brutal deaths.

But when FBI profiler Sander Grant is called into the investigation, Palma's unorthodox theories soon clash with the FBI's traditional views. As Palma and Grant bore deeper into the investigation, they discover a tightly knit secret sorority that includes some of the city's most prominent women. Though terrified by the murders, these women are nonetheless reluctant to help Palma's investigation because the secrets they share are sometimes as dark as their fear of the murderer who stalks them. Palma learns that human nature does not fit neatly into organized theories, and that "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being".

I've always done a great deal of in-depth research for my novels, and Mercy involved some of my most emotionally grueling efforts in that regard. This is one book that grew and evolved as my research continued, and broadened into numerous areas of psychological complexity that were unfamiliar to me at the time. I read volumes and volumes of books on criminal psychology and on the criminal investigation of these particular kinds of crimes. I interviewed scores of people in a variety of law enforcement areas as well as people who had experienced most of the activities described in the novel.

But beyond all of that, this book was a watershed event in my own psychological landscape. In many ways the books that I wrote after Mercy began to change because of my emotional and psychological experiences in creating this story. I've had neither the desire, nor the emotional fortitude, to explore this particular kind of material in future novels.

This book stands alone.