Its the call every cop dreads and Rainie Conner is no exception. She cant believe that in her sleepy town of Bakersville, Oregon there could be a school shooting but unfortunately its true. A gunman opened fire at the local elementary school, killing two children and a teacher.

When Rainie arrives on the scene, shes in for even more horror. The gunman is 13-year-old Danny OGrady, the son of a fellow law enforcement officer.

FBI profiler Pierce Quincy arrives in town to help make sense of things. What neither he nor Rainie realizes is that there is a killer on the loose, a man so deranged that he creates havoc wherever he goes. For reasons of his own, his eye is on Rainie, watching her every move, planning on making sure that she will never know the truth behind the Bakersville school killings.

THE THIRD VICTIM is a heart-stopping novel, a story to get under your skin and haunt you. The action and the tension never let up from first page to last. As timely as todays headlines, this is a one-of-a-kind book. (Feb., 384 pp., $6.99)

—Toby Bromberg