Outer Perimeter

New York Times bestselling author Ken Goddard combines a stirring mystery and an exhilarating forensic thriller in this stunning follow-up to his critically acclaimed novel First Evidence. Here crime scene investigator Colin Cellars continues to pursue the truth behind the bizarre occurrences that so recently turned his life upside down, and his desperate hunt for a killer makes him deadly enemies on both sides of the law....

A man of reason and science, Colin Cellars has earned a reputation as a top crime scene investigator by using microscopic fragments of evidence to fill in the crucial missing pieces of a crime. But Cellars now finds himself disgraced because of a bizarre and violent episode -- an erotically charged encounter with a beautiful woman that led to a horrifying shoot-out right in front of his eyes. And what Cellars thinks he knows about the victim's identity -- and about her death -- has plunged him into a no-man's-land ... and a deadly search for a killer who may or may not be quite of this world.

Meanwhile, as Cellars investigates a case involving dozens of missing victims and a constantly vanishing trail of evidence, he realizes that the three people he trusts most each hold a piece to the puzzle -- one that includes evidence that defies all known technical analysis. And these three individuals -- the woman he loves, a man he has defended with his life, and a friend with ties to the most clandestine wing of the U.S. government -- seem to have their own ideas about what to do with the information.

As Cellars and his team get closer to the truth, the stakes continue to rise. For the hunters are about to become the hunted: victims of a deadly game whose rules they can't understand, whose players they cannot predict. And their few advantages are rapidly disappearing.

A novel of relentless suspense that ranges from the forests of the Pacific Northwest to the secret high-tech laboratories of the NSA, Outer Perimeter is a stunningly vivid, fast-paced tale in which nothing is as it appears and the facts point to conclusions that seem all but impossible. Most of all, it is a chilling and unforgettable voyage that takes readers through tunnels of violence and intrigue -- and out into the unknown....

Ken Goddard is the author of seven previous novels, including the New York Times bestseller Balefire. He has served as a criminalist in three California police and sheriff's departments, and as an instructor in crime scene investigation and forensic techniques at law enforcement academies throughout the United States as well as for Interpol. He lives in Ashland, Oregon, where he is currently director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory, the only full-service wildlife crime laboratory in the world.