Charles Runyon – författare

Accidents happen, but the town of Sherman seems to have more than its fair share of the fatal kind. Someone falls into a well, another drowns, another is killed by an exploding stove. Curt Friedland comes back to town to clear his brother of murder, convinced there is more to all these deaths than mere coincidence. Enlisting the aid of Velda, whose sister was supposedly murdered by Curt''s brother, the two of them gradually begin to attract the attention of a very ingenious killer, a man well versed in the game of Death.

In the sterile white corridors of a mental ward - and the unexplored passages of the mind - unfolds a novel of heart-clutching terror, with a cast of characters caught inextricably in its lurking mystery:DAN BOLLINGER - Ex-Vietnam vet drifting on a marijuana cloud. Women came to his wilderness cabin, one after another, and never left. He insisted he never killed them - until terrifying mental images made him realize, with startled horror, that he knew the burial sites of each girl, though their deaths remained shrouded in mystery!ELIZABETH BODAC - Charmed and challenged by Dan’s enigmatic, elusive personality and the riddle locked in his brain, she vowed to discover Dan’s secret - and save him. But was she trying to save a madman, a murderer, or both?DEBRA BOLLINGER - Dan’s twin sister, a brooding eccentric consumed by a long-standing psychic love for her brother - and a smoldering passion for him that yet threatened to erupt.DR. JEFFREY KOSSUTH - Head of the mental hospital, he swore Dan was the killer even as he began to write Dan’s ''exclusive'' story to sell to the highest bidder. Was he treating a patient, or protecting an investment?With explosive force and pulsing tension, Charles W. Runyon has created a novel combing the dark mysteries of the mind and the breathless excitement of a first-rate thriller.

Terrified, she rolled over on the sand and sat up, not even trying to cover her body.''''Tell you what,'''' the strange man said. ''''We’ll play a little game. You try to remember me and I’ll tell you when you’re getting warm.''''She watched him slowly unwrap an oilcloth package. ''''You hid in that shack,'''' she said, ''''so you could catch me alone . . .''''''''And violate your fair white body? No, Edith. I''ve been there and back. I can’t make that scene again.''''''''Damn you!'''' she cried. ''''You come on like an old lover, but I can’t remember!''''''''You aren’t trying,'''' he said softly. ''''Think of me without the beard, without the scars, a married man with a wife and kid. You destroyed it, Edith. You wiped me clean. Remember?''''He opened the package then and Edith saw the gleam of the gun.''''See, Edith? I brought it two thousand miles. Nobody knows I’m here, so they’ll just have to assume that the sharks got you . . .''''

The day Laura Crewes was named the town’s Beauty Queen was also the day she was seized, blindfolded and cruelly violated. Only the fact that she never saw her violator’s face saved her life.But the fiend didn’t know that the attack would arouse the tigress in Laura, and that she would throw all caution aside to identify and prosecute him.As a consequence, her impassioned manhunt only aroused him to further heights of criminal desire. On the hour that the two finally met face to face, the town awoke to a shocking new lesson in the anatomy of violence.