Book overview
A woman acquitted of murder but condemned to myth lures a disillusioned psychiatrist into a gothic mystery.
Dr. Ian Greyson does not condone violence. He does not condone biting directly into a KitKat bar. And he certainly does not condone calling one of his patients a vampire. And yet in chocolate-town Hershey, Pennsylvania, that is exactly what happens.
Ian absorbs misery for a living. He treats denture-throwing widows and calico cat smugglers at his strip-mall therapy practice, spending most of his days wondering which supernatural deity he betrayed enough to end up here. But one day, in the Walmart beside his office, a child wielding a lollipop tells him one of his patients is a vampire. It's absurd-a joke, a byproduct of a child's overactive imagination-until a body turns up at his door drained of blood.
And his newest patient is Hershey's favorite suspect. Years after a jury acquitted Alexandra Abrams of heinous crimes, public imagination has made her a monster again. Her eerie, ethereal presence does little to help. Ian is seduced by her ability to soothe the ache he has mistaken for a personality.
But he quit forensic psychiatry because he was too attracted to the dangerous. Is he defending a wrongfully accused monster, or simply obsessed with one? And if not her, which one of his patients is a vampire?
