The newly hired personal assistant to a handsome, wealthy photographer is ready to greet her boss with coffee and good cheer. Instead, she finds him slumped in bed, shot to death. The victim recently had received rave media attention for his latest project: images of homeless people in their personal “dream” situations, elaborately costumed and enacting unfulfilled fantasies. There are some, however, who view the whole thing as nothing more than crass exploitation. Has disgruntlement blossomed into homicidal rage? Or do the roots of violence reach down to the victim’s family? Then new murders arise, and Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis begin peeling back layer after layer of intrigue and complexity, culminating in one of the deadliest threats they’ve ever faced.

Early one morning, Homicide Lt. Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware find themselves in a neighborhood of pretty houses, pretty cars and pretty people. The scene they encounter is anything but. A naked young man lies dead in the street, the apparent victim of a collision with a moving van hurtling through suburbia in the darkness. But any thoughts of accidental death vanish when a blood trail leads to a nearby home. Inside, a young woman lies butchered. The identity of the male victim and his role in the horror remain elusive, but that of the woman creates additional questions. And adding to the shock, Alex has met her while working a convoluted child custody case.

A raging wildfire. A massive blackout. A wealthy man shot to death in his palatial hilltop home. For Clay Edison, it’s all in a day’s work. As a deputy coroner, caring for the dead, he speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. He prides himself on an unflinching commitment to the truth. Even when it gets him into trouble. Then, while working the murder scene, Clay is horrified to discover a link to his brother, Luke, who is fresh out of prison and struggling to stay on the straight and narrow. And now he’s gone AWOL. The race is on for Clay to find him before anyone else can. Confronted with Luke’s legacy of violence, he is forced to reckon with his own suspicions, resentments and loyalties.

The LAPD pressures homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis to cater to the demands of a mogul: a hard-to-fathom, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases --- the decades-old death of the mother she never knew. A mysterious woman was found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the case and failed. But as Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware begin digging, the mist begins to lift. Too many coincidences. Facts turn out to be anything but. And, as they soon discover, very real threats lurking in the present.

Clay Edison has his hands full. He has a new baby who won't sleep and is working the graveyard shift. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there? No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call --- this one from a local businessman, wondering if the body could belong to his sister. She went missing fifty years ago, the man says. Or at least I think she did. It’s a little complicated. Clay’s relentless search for answers will unearth a history of violence and secrets, revolution and betrayal. Because in this town, the past isn’t dead. It’s very much alive. And it can be murderous.

LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis has solved a lot of murder cases. On many of them --- the ones he calls “different” --- he taps the brain of brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware. But neither Alex nor Milo are prepared for what they find on an early morning call to a deserted mansion in Bel Air. This is predation, premeditation and cruelty on a whole new level. Four people have been slaughtered and left displayed bizarrely and horrifically in a stretch limousine. Confounding the investigation, none of the victims seems to have any connection to any other, and a variety of methods have been used to dispatch them. As Alex and Milo make their way through blind alleys and mazes baited with misdirection, they encounter a crime so vicious that it stretches the definitions of evil.

Summoned to a run-down former strip joint, Dr. Alex Delaware and LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis find themselves crashing a wild "Saints and Sinners"–themed wedding reception. But they’re not the only uninvited guests. A horrified bridesmaid has discovered the body of a young woman, dressed to impress in pricey haute couture and accessorized with a grisly red slash around her neck. What’s missing is any means of identification, or a single partygoer who recognizes the victim. The baffled bride is convinced the stranger snuck in to sabotage her big day --- and the groom is sure it’s all a dreadful mistake. But Delaware and Sturgis have a hundred guests to question, and a sneaking suspicion that the motive for murder is personal.

A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos. For Clay Edison and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come. The victims keep piling up. Then the smoke clears and the real mystery emerges --- one victim’s death doesn’t match the others. And it falls to Clay to give her a name and a voice. Haunted by the cruelty of her death, he embarks upon a journey into the bizarre, entering a hidden world where innocence and perversity meet and mingle. There, his relentless pursuit of the truth opens the gateway to a dark and baffling past --- and brings him right into the line of fire.

There’s no spilled blood, no evidence of a struggle, and, thanks to the victim’s missing face and hands, no immediate means of identification. And no telling why the disfigured corpse of a stranger has appeared in an upscale L.A. family’s home. Chet Corvin, his wife and their two teenage children are certain the John Doe is unknown to them. Despite that, their cooperation seems guarded. And that’s more than LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware can elicit from the Corvins’ creepy next-door neighbor. As the investigation ensues, it becomes clear that this well-to-do suburban enclave has its share of curious eyes, suspicious minds and loose lips.

A corpse lying at the bottom of the stairs. A beautiful but troubled young woman. A brutal, decades-old murder. And the man charged with making sense of it all. Clay Edison is a former star athlete turned coroner’s investigator. It’s his job to care for the dead and the people they leave behind. It’s not his job to solve mysteries. But some cases --- and some people --- can’t be resisted. What he discovers will set him on a quest to overturn a hideous injustice, no matter the consequences.

At nearly 100 years old, Thalia Mars is a far cry from the patients who child psychologist Alex Delaware normally treats. But the charming, witty woman convinces Alex to meet with her in a suite at the Aventura, a luxury hotel with a checkered history. What Thalia wants from Alex are answers to unsettling questions --- about guilt, patterns of criminal behavior and victim selection. When Alex asks the reason for her morbid fascination, Thalia promises to tell all during their next session. But when he shows up the following morning, he discovers Thalia dead in her room. Alex and homicide detective Milo Sturgis must peel back the layers of a fascinating but elusive woman’s life and embark on one of the most baffling investigations either of them has ever experienced.

Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware meets actress Zelda Chase when called upon to evaluate her five-year-old son, Ovid. Years later, he is unexpectedly reunited with Zelda when she is involuntarily committed after a bizarre psychotic episode. Shortly after her release, she is discovered dead on the grounds of a palatial Bel Air estate. Alex turns to his friend, LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, for help in finding out who ended Zelda’s broken life. At the same time, he is caught up in another quest: the search for her missing son. And when other victims vanish from the same upscale neighborhood, worry turns to terror.

It’s been more than a year since LAPD detective Jacob Lev learned the remarkable truth about his family, and he’s not coping well. He’s back to drinking, he’s not talking to his father, the LAPD Special Projects Department continues to shadow him, and the memory of a woman named Mai haunts him day and night. While Jacob has tried to build a bridge to his mother, she remains a stranger to him, imprisoned inside her own tattered mind. Then he comes across the file for a gruesome unsolved murder that brings the two halves of his life into startling collision.

A brilliant, deeply dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches. Only five years old when she witnessed her parents’ deaths in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her fierce intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But even as an adult with an accomplished professional life, Grace still has a dark, secret side. When her two worlds shockingly converge, Grace’s harrowing past returns with a vengeance.

Ursula Corey is a successful, attractive divorcée who has been executed. Two suspects emerge: the dead woman’s business partner/ex-husband and her divorce lawyer/secret lover. But just as psychologist Alex Delaware and homicide cop Milo Sturgis think they’re zeroing in on the perp, a bizarre new clue stirs up eerie echoes of a previously unsolved murder. And the discovery of yet another crime scene bearing the same taunting signature raises the specter of a serial killer on a mission.

Newly reassigned to a Special Projects squad he didn’t even know existed, Detective Jacob Lev is sent to a murder scene far up in the hills of Hollywood Division. There is no body, only an unidentified head lying on the floor of a house. Seared into a kitchen counter nearby is a single word: the Hebrew for justice. All that Detective Lev has believed to be true will be upended --- and not only his world, but the world itself, will be changed.

At the behest of the court, Dr. Alex Delaware becomes embroiled in a bizarre child custody dispute initiated by physician Constance Sykes against her sister and begins to realize that there is much about the siblings he has failed to comprehend. When the court battle between the Sykes sisters erupts into cold, calculating murder and a rapidly growing number of victims, Alex knows he’s been snared in a toxic web of pathology.

Dr. Morton Hander practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Hander paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn. It’s psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware’s job to try to unlock the terrible secret buried in Meldoy’s memory. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent victim.

A backyard renovation unearths an infant’s body, buried 60 years ago. Soon thereafter in a nearby park, another disturbingly bizarre discovery is made not far from the body of a young woman shot in the head. Helping LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis to link these eerie incidents is brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But even the good doctor’s vast experience with matters both clinical and criminal might not be enough to cut down to the bone of this chilling case --- and draw out the disturbing truth.

Unraveling the madness behind L.A.’s most brutal homicides is what psychologist Alex Delaware does best. But even he is stymied by a string of seemingly random slayings with only one clue left behind --- a blank page bearing a question mark.

The murder victim’s fingertips were severed and her body mutilated. Recognizing the need for expert psychological insight on this gruesome case, LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis calls in his friend and colleague, Alex Delaware. When a lead offers up the dead woman’s nickname --- Mystery --- the case takes an alarming turn.

With explosive action and fierce villainy that rivals James Bond movies at their best, GONE is the next astounding novel by James Patterson.