Double Edge [Paperback]

Hazy characterization and cryptic allusions to an earlier adventure (Cutting Edge) eventually build up to a taut game of psychic cat-and-mouse in Walker's latest. "The Snatcher" takes impoverished black boys from the streets of Houston and tortures them, though his attention span usually lasts about a week before he mercifully kills his victims. Lucas Stonecoat, a city detective assigned to unsolved cases, is currently investigating a hooker's death at the behest of her son, who claims to be a contract killer. He is assisted by psychic detective Kim Desinor (on loan from the FBI), who can enter a victim's mind, feel his or her torture, even develop sympathetic wounds?all to help unearth clues about the killer's identity. The book starts slowly and then explodes as Lucas, a driven man with chemical demons, struggles to keep a firm grasp on reality. Once Walker gets Lucas and Kim in tandem the chase is spellbinding.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In his acclaimed Instinct novels, Robert W. Walker has probed the deepest recesses of the criminal mind, bringing us face-to-face with killers as brilliant as they are vicious. Now Walker returns to the gritty streets of Houston he first explored in Cutting Edge, where Officer Lucas Stonecoat and police psychiatrist Meredyth Sanger face a new predator: the Snatcher.