''Crais is on top form in CHASING DARKNESS. It''s a first-rate puzzle, with many twists and nothing quite as it seems''

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

''Elvis Cole continues to be up there with the best of them ... the climax and denouement are terrific''

THE TIMES

Three years ago Elvis Cole''s actions may have freed a killer. Now three more young women are dead...

It is fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. As the Police and Fire Departments evacuate the inhabitants, they find something no one expected: the days-old corpse of a middle-aged recluse who apparently committed suicide. Then comes an even more horrible discovery. Clutched in his lap is a photo album containing photographs of seven young women who have been murdered. Each photograph was taken only moments after the women were killed, and could only have been taken by the killer.

One murder per year for seven years, their bodies found in different parts of the city. LAPD homicide detectives had never connected the seven murders. But now with the discovery of the ''death album'' there is a link.

Only one suspect had been charged in any of those cases but, with evidence supplied by Elvis Cole, in the end he walked free. That suspect was the suicide now discovered in the fire... and now the police are out for Cole...