Loverboy

LOVER BOY IS DYING TO COME OUT AND PLAY.

The rules: Two weeks before he intends to slowly and sadistically kill his prey, Loverboy sends a collage of the future crime scene to the FBI. If the agents can solve the riddles of the collage in time, they can save the victim. Loverboy thinks that’s more than fair. It’s not his fault the feds have already failed five times.

The players: Rosalind Carnow was last seen alone in her Las Vegas hotel room. No one knows where she is now—except Loverboy, and he’s not saying a word. Imogen Page, an FBI agent with a painful past and uncertain future, may be the only person who can find her—and she is determined to decipher Loverboy’s brilliant but deranged puzzle. If Loveboy lets her get that far.

The game: Imogen matches wits with a homicidal mastermind, a fiercely intelligent opponent. Armed with her extraordinarily keen sense for detection, she must do for Rosalind what could not be done for Loverboy’s previous victims: save her life.

Michele Jaffe holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature of the Renaissance from Harvard University. She is the author of The Water Nymph and The Stargazer as well as Lady Killer and Secret Admirer. She lives is Las Vegas, Nevada.