A psychiatrist must decide whether to reveal a prominent patient's devastating secret or watch someone die in international bestselling author Campbell Armstrong's tense, exhilarating thriller
In his office parking lot, Los Angeles psychiatrist Jerry Lomax is confronted by a man wielding a knife. Lomax knocks him down in a scuffle and calls the police, but his attacker escapes before they arrive. Lomax and his wife have been growing apart, and he doesn't tell her about the attack when he gets home. He doesn't know it, but something is about to happen that could take her out of his life forever.

The call comes just before lunchtime. His wife has been kidnapped, and her life will be over unless Lomax does something no doctor is ever supposed to do: hand over a patient's file. The patient in question is Emily Ford, the nominee for US attorney general, a right-wing firebrand who has enemies on both sides of the aisle. In a confidential doctor-patient session, she revealed information that could have shattering repercussions if publicized. Will Lomax figure out a way to avoid becoming an accomplice to betrayal and murder?

Campbell Armstrong (1944-2013) was an international bestselling author best known for his thriller series featuring British counterterrorism agent Frank Pagan, and his quartet of Glasgow Novels, featuring detective Lou Perlman. Two of these, White Rage and Butcher, were nominated for France's Prix du Polar. Armstrong's novels Assassins & Victims and The Punctual Rape won Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Awards.
Born in Glasgow and educated at the University of Sussex, Armstrong worked as a book editor in London and taught creative writing at universities in the United States.