Play of Shadows

An ancient creature of Greek mythology drives a killer’s unspeakable motives in a pulse-pounding thriller by the Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Dark of Night.

On a stormy Chicago night, renowned semiotician Dr. Evan Wilding and his brother, River, who’s back from an archaeological dig, reunite in a mystery. A package addressed to both of them contains a hand-drawn maze, an ancient Cretan coin, and a cryptic greeting: Let the game begin.

The opening move is murder.

In a downtown alley, a man has been found nearly cleaved in two, a symbol drawn on his forehead and a savage rip in his throat. Given the clues, Evan sees a parallel to a fearsome Greek myth. Which means his friend Detective Addie Bisset is on the trail of a legendary flesh-eating monster—one terrifyingly human and tumbling a panicked city toward chaos.

Evan, Addie, and River scramble to discover who’s behind the appalling crimes and decipher the baffling motives. The body count is rising. The endgame is nowhere in sight. And the stakes are nothing less than life and death.

Barbara Nickless is the Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestselling author of At First Light and Dark of Night in the Dr. Evan Wilding series as well as the Sydney Rose Parnell series, which includes Blood on the Tracks, a Suspense Magazine Best of 2016 selection and winner of the Colorado Book Award and the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence; Dead Stop, winner of the Colorado Book Award and nominee for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence; Ambush; and Gone to Darkness. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Writer’s Digest and on Criminal Element, among other markets. She lives in Colorado, where she loves to cave, snowshoe, hike, and drink single malt Scotch―usually not at the same time. Connect with her at www.barbaranickless.com.