Detective Inspector Antonia Hawkins

Christmas is coming. One body at a time. Three weeks before Christmas: Sunday, one a.m. A woman is drowned in her bathtub. One week later: Sunday, one a.m. A woman is beaten savagely to death, every bone in her body broken. Another week brings another victim. As panic spreads across London, DCI Antonia Hawkins, leading her first murder investigation, must stop a cold, careful killer whose twisted motives can only be guessed at, before the next body is found. On Sunday.

When the body of a young woman is found brutally slain on Valentine's Day the press reacts with barely disguised glee. For DCI Antonia Hawkins, still recovering from the terrible wounds inflicted by another killer, the pressure of another high profile murder investigation could barely be worse timed.

A man is found buried in a secluded wood on the outskirts of London. Naked, beaten and bruised; forensics also show that he hasn't eaten in the 24 hours before his murder. The hunt is on. As more bodies are unearthed in the same state, DCI Antonia Hawkins struggles to find a pattern in the seemingly random killings. But who is the hunter? Hawkins is starting to believe that the victims have all been captured, kept and hunted down like animals by a special kind of killer playing a twisted game. And so far, the killer is the one winning . . .