For Dix Mallory, the reign of terror begins with a series of anonymous phone calls, shortly after his wife is killed in a freak accident. Or did it start before that? Was her death in fact cold-blooded murder? And could the killer be one of their friends? Shock follows shock as the tormentor escalates his campaign of fear in both subtle and dramatic ways. But it's not until a sudden act of violence, as brutal as it is unexpected, that Dix realizes just how monstrous and far-reaching his scheme really is. What follows is a nightmare of terror, suspicion, paranoia . . . and death.