An award-winning writer, Sam Millar has enjoyed critical and professional acclaim for his work He is a winner of the 1998 Brian Moore Short Story Award. In 2005 Brandon published his first crime novel, The Redemption Factory, which will be published in the US by Thunder’s Mouth.
Karl Kane is a private investigator with a dark past. As a child, he witnessed the brutal rape and murder of his mother. The same man sexually molested Karl, leaving him for dead with horrific knife wounds covering his body. Years later, Karl has a chance to avenge his mother’s murder by killing the man responsible. The opportunity arises on one unforgettable Good Friday night.
For reasons he later regards as cowardice, Karl allows the opportunity to slip through his hands, only to be shattered when, two days later, two young girls are sexually molested and then brutally murdered by the killer on Easter Sunday morning. Karl now holds himself responsible for their deaths.
Young homeless women and drug addicts are being abducted before being brutally mutilated and murdered, and a city is held in a grip of unspeakable terror. The cops are unable – or unwilling – to apprehend the elusive serial killer, and corrupt politicians turn a seemingly blind and almost approving eye to the catalogue of murders.
The perpetrator is cunning, wealthy and influential. More importantly, he has never once made a mistake in his grisly calling – until now. By abducting Katie, the young daughter of legendary private investigator, Karl Kane, the killer has just made his first mistake, which could well turn out to be his last.
Blaming himself for his daughter’s abduction, Karl Kane must now reach down to the darkest recesses of his troubled soul and mind, to become as cunning and merciless as the killer – but even that may not be enough to penetrate the fortress-like lair where Karl suspects the killer keeps his victims. There is only one man capable of helping Kane attack the ‘dark place’, a man despised and hated by Detective Inspector Mark Wilson, but even that help becomes as elusive as any Karl will get from the cops.
From the nail-biting beginning to the explosive ending, Karl Kane’s nightmarish journey forces upon him a decision that changes his life forever, and forces him to look into the abyss of no return.
