Michael Kerr

The Sign of Fear Michael Kerr

When Shelley Payne, a close friend of Laura Scott, is brutally murdered, Laura and her partner, ex-FBI profiler Jim Elliott, investigate on their own time. Everything points to the perpetrator being Shelley's husband, Barry, due to a pending divorce and the prospect of having to pay a large settlement being a strong enough motive for him to want his wife dead. Proving it was going to be difficult, though, due to the fact that he was out of the country when Shelley was slain. Laura and Jim soon determine that the killing was carried out by a professional hitman, although the police believe, mistakenly, that the crime was in furtherance of a burglary that escalated. Identifying the person that Barry Payne had asked to arrange the hit for him, Laura and Jim discover that Tony Russo - a notorious London gangster - had brokered the deal. To uncover the killer's identity they will have to work their way through a list of seriously dangerous individuals, against seemingly impossible odds, to ultimately find themselves in the firing line of a homicidal maniac.