Compulsion — Jonathan Kellerman

A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. The curious fact that all their killers drove luxury vehicles, coupled with a baffling lack of any apparent motive, is enough to warrant the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his frequent collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware.

What begins with a solitary bloodstain in a stolen sedan quickly spiders outward in odd and unexpected directions, leading Delaware and Sturgis from the well-heeled center of L.A. society to its desperate edges -- on the trail of a killer who proves to be a fleeting shape-shifter, defying identification, leaving behind dazed witnesses and death -- and compelling Alex and Milo to confront the true face of murderous madness.