First, there is Ellen Cox, a teacher for the deaf at an academy in Norfolk, Virginia. On her daily commute from Virginia Beach, she is driving across a bridge when it collapses and her car clings perilously to the edge for most of the day. Dr. Ben Bradshaw, on his way home from work, stops, and ends up spending the day talking to her until rescue efforts are successful. Immediately, Ellen becomes the focus of the media and her picture is splashed throughout the country. The editor of the newspaper in her alleged hometown finds she never lived in that town and that her home state has no record of her birth. Surprisingly, the editor does nothing with this discovery.

FBI forensic psychiatrist Dr. Matthew Graham has retired from fieldwork and teaches now at the Academy. Some say he's burned out or has lost his nerve, but he knows that deep down he simply doesn't care about anything or anyone but Polly. We meet Polly on the last page. Paired with him is a tough SAC named "Charlie." She is the most dynamic character in the book. It is Charlie who argues to bring Matt back into the field to help her investigate the "Church Pew Murders."

Enter the murderer. After he slices his victim's throat with a scalpel, he places their remains very artfully in church pews. Starting in the Durham, North Carolina, area he appears to be making his way northward.

Usually one doesn't think of converging plot lines as parallel, but in this book, the author jumps from group to group with no apparent attempt to make the transition seamless. Matt and Charlie are in a hot argument, and suddenly the scene switches to Ellen and Ben getting to know each other or the murderer spotting a new victim.

After the accident, Ellen is overwhelmed by nightmares of faces and unidentifiable terror. The fact that she doesn't exist on paper anywhere is also disturbing to her. And when she revisits her hometown, she finds that her street address, home and church don't exist. What bothered me was the fact that she never found it odd that she had no clear memories before age 12, and it had apparently never occurred to her to wonder about it. Also ho hum is the way her romance with Ben kind of drifts along.

Back at the FBI, Matt is becoming submerged in the serial killer's mind. Having read more than one book about this profession, I found it odd that the agent operated almost totally by emotion rather than logic. He seemed to be able to get into the killer's mind and recreate the murders. Of course, Matt was pictured as dysfunctional anyway, but it did make solving the crimes a bit too easy.

And as for the murderer who has multiple personalities – we share in their discussions with each other about the victims. In this strange way the author defeats her purpose, because it results in taking away any sense of apprehension the reader might have about the next murder. At least I would think that a writer would want more tension in a book about a serial killer.

Ball deserves high marks for an imaginative twisted story, but – regrettably – low marks for her execution of that story. Even to an unsophisticated mathematician, the net result of such a combination is a less than average read.

--Thea Davis