Angela Benedict

A State of Despair Angela Benedict

Coroner Victoria Arlington is beautiful and intelligent although she feels her integrity is often in jeopardy in the macho world of police officers and the deadly world of serial killers. Her routine of dissected bodies is pushing her closer and closer to a complete breakdown. Life didn't hand Danny O'Dell any good cards in the beginning of his life and he grew up believing that the world is a violent place where violence is justified and few are to be trusted. Danny did the only thing he could to bring order to his life. He became a cop. Danny has become a legend on the force, but when the one truly good thing in his life, his beautiful wife, Cynthia Halloway O'Dell, is raped and murdered, Danny begins to drift closer and closer towards the ugly world he knows so well, where ultra violent predators commit unspeakable crimes. Danny delves farther into a killer's mind than ever before to solve his wife's murder and follows the advice of convicted killer Colby Andrews. Re-enacting the crimes of the famous ones; Bundy, Desalvo, Kemper, is the wrong exercise for a man walking a narrow line. Quickly, Danny realizes he and Colby are not so different and that he too had a cycle of violentization that was waiting to be completed. The darkness that plagues Tory also engulfs Danny but Tory is the only one with hope. Edward Arlington, a gifted psychiatrist encourages Tory into the survivor circles he leads and maintains a careful watch on his daughter. Detective Daylon Richardson, regrets leaving Tory once in his life and is determined to win her back. The quiet Romanian violin maker who owns the music store under Tory's apartment plays for her each night and teaches her that beauty is everywhere. A new rash of killings begin that leave Tory with the unsettling intuition that the new killer is Danny. Her honest decision that dissolved the evidence the police had on a prior case has lost Tory the support of her own department. As the body count rises, Tory knows she will have to bring down the master hunter herself.