Sneak peek: TBC cover copy

This is the approved cover copy for the advanced reader’s version of The Bride Collector, a Dekker thriller coming in April 2010 from Hachette/Center Street. Enjoy the sneak peek. -KSK

FBI special agent Brad Raines is facing his most complex case yet. A Denver serial killer has murdered a string of beautiful young women, leaving a bridal veil at each scene, and he’s picking up his pace.  Unable to crack the case, Raines appeals for help from a most unusual source: residents of the Center for Wellbeing and Intelligence, a private psychiatric institution for mentally ill people who are extraordinarily gifted.

It’s there that he meets Paradise, a young woman who witnessed her father murder her family and barely escaped his hand.  Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Paradise may also have an extrasensory gift: the ability to experience the final moments of a person’s life when she touches the dead body.

In a desperate attempt to find the killer, Raines enlists Paradise’s help. Gradually he starts to question whether sanity resides outside the hospital walls…or inside.

As the Bride Collector picks up the pace – and volume – of his gruesome killings, the case becomes even more personal to Raines when his friend and colleague, a beautiful young forensic psychologist, becomes the Bride Collector’s fourth target.  And she isn’t the last – by far.