Susan Clayton, a professional puzzle maker, is stumped by this anonymous note left at her door: "THE FIRST PERSON POSSESSES THAT WHICH THE SECOND PERSON HID." Distracted by the sweltering Florida Keys evening and her cancer-stricken mother in the next room, Susan spends hours before she solves the riddle--it means "I have found you." Ominous words, considering that a serial killer is stalking Florida. And in this novel, Florida is ominous to begin with: it's set in a Robocop-like future society where people carry semiautomatics like breath mints, road rage reigns, and folks gladly trade their right to privacy for a place in a protected community called the Fifty-first State (Katzenbach's scary takeoff on Disney's planned town of Celebration, Florida). Meanwhile, Susan's brother Jeffrey, an authority on serial killers, is finishing up a lecture when his silent security alarm flashes. His metal-detecting alarm was set off by special agent Robert Martin of "State Security" (an American-style SS), who confronts the good professor with some bad news about his late father, a psychopath. Could he be the one who left Susan that threatening note? Can anybody stop the Fifty-first State from getting even scarier? With mounting suspense, Jeffrey, Susan, and their ailing mother put their heads together to keep the futuristic body count from getting wholly out of control. There is perhaps a touch less gore than Katzenbach fans may be used to, but no fewer thrills. He has seen the future, and it will make your hair stand on end. --Rebekah Warren


From Library Journal
In his new novel, Katzenbach (Just Cause, LJ 7/92) portrays the machinations of a self-styled omniscient murderer who is made more frightening by what is left unsaid than by what is said. In the not-too-distant future, Jeffrey Clayton, a psychologist and expert tracker of serial killers, learns about several vicious killings in the Western Territory, the only "safe zone" in the continental United States. Everyone elsewhere, including Jeffrey's sister, Susan, who writes word puzzles for a Florida newspaper, carries an arsenal of weapons. Years ago, the Claytons' mother had fled with her children when she recognized that her husband was a murderer. Now he is freely killing young women in the Western Territory while stalking and playing mind games with his daughter. Soon the entire family is assembled in the West to play out a deadly contest. Katzenbach is a master at creating believable people caught up in horrific situations. Librarians can recommend this title to anyone who wants a well-written suspense novel dealing with the serial killer but without most of the usual accompanying gore.?Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., OhioCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Scott Veale
Katzenbach is adept at exploring the twisted workings of the deviant psyche.


From Booklist
The U.S. has become more horrible than anyone could imagine; crime is rampant, and all citizens carry semiautomatic or even automatic weapons. When a teenage girl is found dead in a supposedly crime-free area controlled by the government, called the Fifty-first State, the murder appears to be one of a series that began a number of years prior. The Fifty-first authorities turn to criminal-mind expert Jeffrey Clayton, who has little choice but to help out, even though it means he will meet with personal demons he didn't want to resurrect. Part of the past he is trying to forget involves his family--his mother ran with the kids to escape his father, who was said to have committed suicide not long after. But his mother, now cancer-riddled and living in the Florida Keys with his sister, Susan, begins to suspect that his father is not yet out of their lives. Jeffrey suspects the same, and as he uncovers the details surrounding the murders, he feels his past closing in on him. The family reunites in an effort to rid their lives of evil once and for all. This is Katzenbach's first novel in six years, and readers will find it a frightening and captivating story about family, death, and evil--truly worth the wait! Mary Frances Wilkens


From Kirkus Reviews
Jeffrey Clayton, a criminology professor and noted expert on serial killers, is handed an unusual assignment: tracking down a mass murderer who just might be his long-presumed-dead father. Seasoned fans of Katzenbach (The Shadow Man, 1995, etc.) probably won't object to the light psychological treatment given to this almost like-father/like-son story whose setting in the dreary near future adds an original note to the basic formula. Clayton, a withdrawn academic whose fear of his students is justified in an increasingly violent age (everyone, it seems, now packs guns), grudgingly accepts the job of hunting for his father from Martin, an agent employed by the state security arm of the soon-to-be 51st state, a multicorporate holding carved from several western states that promises total safety in exchange for the suspension of certain basic constitutional rights. Martin, it turns out, had questioned Clayton senior some 25 years before about a killing, but because of lamentable constitutional safeguards (the author is forever ambivalent in this regard) he let him go; now a spate of killings marked by the same MO seems to indicate that Jeffrey's father is back in business. Meanwhile, his sister Susan, a crack shot and professional puzzle-writer who lives with the siblings' terminally ill mother, Diana, in the Florida Keys, has suddenly begun receiving cryptic notes; a superb decipherer, she realizes independently that their menacing father still lives--and is out to get them. Susan and Diana, toting a small arsenal, join forces with Jeffrey, and the three cleverly piece together a host of disparate clues that lead them to the final, talky confrontation. Less gory than one might expect, and less psychologically compelling than the narrative would want us to believe: Katzenbach is not likely to keep anyone guessing too long, but the action is fast-paced and most of the story's loose ends are smartly tied. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A professor of abnormal psychology, Jeffrey Clayton struggles with a dark past. Twenty-five years before, Jeffrey and his mother and sister fled his tyrannical father - a man who was later suspected in the heinous murder of a young student. Though the father was never charged, he committed suicide. Or so it seemed. Since then Jeffrey's mother and his sister, Susan, have concealed themselves in the remote tangled swamps of the Upper Keys, where Susan creates word games for Miami Magazine. But someone has sent her a cryptic note. Once deciphered, it carries a terrifying message: I have found you. At the same time, a serial killer has invaded a community whose citizens seek a haven of old-fashioned values. And one new-fashioned guarantee: unconditional safety. But no one is safe from this intruder - who murders young girls in unspeakable ways. Is Jeffrey Clayton's father the source of this latest killing spree? The authorities think so - and they present Jeffrey with an ultimatum: Find the butcher responsible for the newborn spate of carnage. Find your father.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

In his new novel, Katzenbach (Just Cause, LJ 7/92) portrays the machinations of a self-styled omniscient murderer who is made more frightening by what is left unsaid than by what is said. In the not-too-distant future, Jeffrey Clayton, a psychologist and expert tracker of serial killers, learns about several vicious killings in the Western Territory, the only "safe zone" in the continental United States. Everyone elsewhere, including Jeffrey's sister, Susan, who writes word puzzles for a Florida newspaper, carries an arsenal of weapons. Years ago, the Claytons' mother had fled with her children when she recognized that her husband was a murderer. Now he is freely killing young women in the Western Territory while stalking and playing mind games with his daughter. Soon the entire family is assembled in the West to play out a deadly contest. Katzenbach is a master at creating believable people caught up in horrific situations. Librarians can recommend this title to anyone who wants a well-written suspense novel dealing with the serial killer but without most of the usual accompanying gore.Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., Ohio

Kirkus Reviews

Jeffrey Clayton, a criminology professor and noted expert on serial killers, is handed an unusual assignment: tracking down a mass murderer who just might be his long-presumed-dead father. Seasoned fans of Katzenbach (The Shadow Man, 1995, etc.) probably won't object to the light psychological treatment given to this almost like-father/like-son story whose setting in the dreary near future adds an original note to the basic formula. Clayton, a withdrawn academic whose fear of his students is justified in an increasingly violent age (everyone, it seems, now packs guns), grudgingly accepts the job of hunting for his father from Martin, an agent employed by the state security arm of the soon-to-be 51st state, a multicorporate holding carved from several western states that promises total safety in exchange for the suspension of certain basic constitutional rights. Martin, it turns out, had questioned Clayton senior some 25 years before about a killing, but because of lamentable constitutional safeguards (the author is forever ambivalent in this regard) he let him go; now a spate of killings marked by the same MO seems to indicate that Jeffrey's father is back in business. Meanwhile, his sister Susan, a crack shot and professional puzzle-writer who lives with the siblings' terminally ill mother, Diana, in the Florida Keys, has suddenly begun receiving cryptic notes; a superb decipherer, she realizes independently that their menacing father still lives—and is out to get them. Susan and Diana, toting a small arsenal, join forces with Jeffrey, and the three cleverly piece together a host of disparate clues that lead them to the final, talky confrontation. Less gory than onemight expect, and less psychologically compelling than the narrative would want us to believe: Katzenbach is not likely to keep anyone guessing too long, but the action is fast-paced and most of the story's loose ends are smartly tied.