Peppered with the gritty details of prison life, Title delivers a gripping, atmospheric story bursting with authenticity. All in all, Killing Time is an ambitious beginning to what promises to be an outstanding new crime fiction series. Natalie Price has a tough job. A superintendent in the Massachussetts prison system, she rules over inmates' lives just before they get released. She's had to fight hard to be taken seriously in this harsh world, a world that is mostly male--on both sides of the bars. But she believes in what she's doing, and she's good at it. Now, however, she gets the biggest challenge of her career when a good friend, a college professor who was teaching one of Natalie's charges, is brutally murdered. Natalie had gone out on a limb to give this inmate, a convicted rapist named Dean Walsh, this opportunity, and it looks like Dean certainly made the most of it: He's the prime suspect. But he's not the only one, and Natalie's job--maybe even her life--rides on the investigation.

Elise Title is the author of many novels, most recently the psychological thriller, Romeo. A psychotherapist who spent six years working for the Massachusetts state prison system-an experience upon which this series is based-she lives in Massachusetts and writes full time.