Nora Clay lives a quiet life. Sure, working alone in her cramped apartment typing up the audio tapes the agency send her can be dull, but it means Nora doesn't have to mix with people, especially men. If you work in an office you always get trouble from men, and Nora knows all about that kind of trouble. Then one day she finds herself paying attention to what she's writing, to what the man is saying on the tape. And Nora knows she's going to have to do something about it. Otherwise the nightmares are going to come back. For Detective Conrad Voort of the NYPD, the frenzied slayings of a series of men are a baffling, unconnected puzzle, turning an oven-hot summer in the city into a cauldron of fear and horror. But Voort may not have to wait too long to find the killer. The killer may be about to find him.