Impulse to Murder

A dark winter night. Sophie Myerson is a staff psychologist at an out-patient mental health clinic in Washington, DC. Her workday is over, but Sophie stays late to finish writing a psychological test report. Thoughts of her upcoming wedding distract her, and she is delighted when her fiancé calls to say he wants to stop by. He looks awful. She’s concerned. And then he tells her their engagement is off. There will be no wedding. No marriage. The future she envisioned is gone. She lashes out, too shocked and distraught to listen, and flees down the clinic steps to the sidewalk and onto the grounds of the recreation center. Her foot hits something. She stumbles. A dead woman is staring up with vacant eyes—she’s been strangled with her own scarf. A female patient at the clinic is soon murdered the same way. Sophie’s life is in a tailspin. Her friends and colleagues are suspects. She misses her ex-fiancé. She doesn’t know who to trust anymore. Scariest of all, if the murders are connected, she fears a serial killer is lurking in her neighborhood, hunting prey.