His world began in agony.
Squealing brakes. An impact. He floated for a moment and crashed onto a hard surface. Bones splintered, and he screamed. Cramps folded him over.
He pushed the pain, the fear, the dying away from him, put them behind a thick, hard wall, and became himself. Alone. The wall protected him.
No man remembers his birth. The pain and confusion remained buried behind that wall for forty years. And then Max Iverson went to a movie and was torn open again.
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Suddenly, a murderer's memories force their way into Max Iverson's mind. Max is horrified and bewildered. Surely this isn't real!
But he knows that it is real. He can't say how he knows, but he does. The violent memories he's forced to experience have something about them that makes him sure of it. The killer is reveling in the murder he committed, playing it over and over in his mind. Max is forced to experience it over and over, as well.
Max is sickened by what he sees in his mind?by what fills someone else's mind. Max is a private person by nature, isolated from his fellow humans. Now he is forced to know what the worst of them are thinking, and his nights are filled with nightmares.
He knows he can't let it pass. He has to do whatever he can to bring to justice the killer whose thoughts he knows.
Max is able to help the authorities find the killer, and he hopes that's the last of it. But it isn't. More and more often, he experiences the terrible thoughts of evil people. He feels sucked into their crimes, violated and made filthy by their thoughts. He is unaware of the extent to which their evil is infecting him.
He continues to help the authorities capture and convict those people. He is unaware of the danger this exposes him to. There is a cabal of criminals behind much of the major crime in the city. He didn't know of their existence, but they become aware of his, and now they are determined to eliminate him.
Max must change from frightened quarry to pitiless hunter. He is aided by the skills he absorbs from the minds of the killers he kills. His hunt leads him to the cabal and also to life?changing discoveries about his own history.
