Here we encounter the controlled madness of two men, one a former cop, the other a misfit and killer of women. The ex-cop Thomas Haftmann, formerly of Cleveland Homicide, is recently divorced and working as a private investigator in the resort town of Jefferson-on-the-Lake. Barely surviving financially, and haunted by his own twin demons of gambling and alcohol, Haftmann gets swept up in the statewide manhunt for a killer who meets women on swingers' Internet sites and kills them. Ohio police are finding headless bodies displayed in bizarre poses. Sensationalized in the tabloid press as the "Jack-in-the-Box Killer for leaving severed heads at murder scenes, Lonnie Dale Nelson carries with him a voice in his head (his "angel) that grows stronger as his madness intensifies over the course of the year-long manhunt. And Haftmann's own mental instability is accelerating as the trail leading to Nelson grows warmer.