Somewhere out there is a murderer with over twenty killings to his name - each an apparently random slaying of a woman over a twenty-year period and all unconnnected on the police files.

But Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins begins to see a pattern: he senses connections between this string of seemingly motiveless pointless and unsolved killings. Then the murderer emerges not as a random killer but a cool efficient despatcher - in his own eyes a saver of souls and protector of the innocent.

As they are drawn inexorably together Hopkins and the murderer challenge each other in a confrontation which pits icy intelligence against white-heated madness...