A Carmine Delmonico novel

When his cousin reports the theft of a lethal, untraceable toxin, Captain Carmine Delmonico investigates a series of sudden deaths implicating a scientist who Delmonico believes is being framed by a killer in the academic community. "Connecticut, 1969. Una toxina letal extraída del pez globo ha sido robada del laboratorio de la universidad. Cuando los cadáveres empiezan a amontonarse, el capitán Carmine Delmonico entra en acción. Las muertes tienen dos elementos en común: la acción del veneno y la presencia del doctor Jim Hunter, un afroamericano casado con una blanca, que se ha enfrentado al escándalo y a los prejuicios durante casi toda su vida. Pero ¿por qué iba a poner en peligro cuanto ha conseguido? ¿Acaso están tendiéndole una trampa? Y en ese caso, ¿quién?"--Casadellibro

"At the heart of this blend of suspense, forensic science, eerie and sadistic sexuality, and good old-fashioned storytelling is a dedicated but lonely detective, Lieutenant Carmine Delmonico. The year is 1965, the setting a university town in Connecticut, and serial killers are still referred to as "multiple murderers." Profiling hasn't even begun, so Delmonico has to go it alone on a frantic learning curve that has the killer always two steps ahead of him." "The story begins when parts of the body of a young woman are found in a research center for neurology privately funded by one of the university's greatest benefactors." "It swiftly develops that the killer is very possibly a member of the research facility and that this is not his first murder. With great cunning and daring, he targets a "type" of young woman, following which the women are subjected to unspeakable torture and rape, and finally a horrible death." "The suspects are many and varied, and include a wealthy and ambitious young Indian eager to win a Nobel Prize; the professional head of the institute, who does something peculiar in his basement; an internationally renowned epilepsy clinician; a neurochemist with a taste for fine food, wine, and music; a Japanese with rarefied and strange tastes; and a business manager named Desdemona Dupre, a tough, well-educated woman, full of common sense, for whom Delmonico feels a growing, risky attraction." As the serial murders begin to mount - the killer is getting more and more bloodthirsty and bold - and the media and anguished parents begin to put pressure on the governor, Delmonico and the forceful, enigmatic Miss Dupre are drawn deeper and deeper into the secrets of the suspects and toward an old family scandal as shocking as it is bizarre. But is the scandal something quite separate, or does it lie at the roots of the present killings?

America in 1968 is in turmoil and the leafy Holloman, Connecticut, suburb of Carew is being silently terrorized by a series of vicious and systematic rapes. When finally one victim finds the courage to speak out and go to the police, the rapist escalates to murder. For Captain Carmine Delmonico, it seems to be a case with no clues.