Gator Bait

Young women are dying across Dade and Broward Counties in South Florida at an alarming clip, and an elite team of seasoned investigators has been brought together to solve the most baffling and intense murder case in memory.

It’s mid-May when a group of local doctors, out for a leisurely round of golf, stumble upon the body of a beautiful young woman, half-naked, badly bruised, lying in a fairway-side ravine. Angela Maynard is the fifth young lady to be found dead—raped, battered and grotesquely strangled—in the past three months.

Detectives Marty Tanner and Parker Reese hustle to the crime scene, beaten there by WQMT field reporter Nancy Albright. Tanner, respected and considered brilliant by his investigative peers, with a passion for noble quotes and a genius for piecing together the scantest clues, is nearing the end of his career in homicide. He’s a bright, witty, and good-natured cop, but this is the case that haunts his soul. Parker Reese is young and brash, a hard-charger in his own right, and cocksure in almost everything he does – at least on the surface. Only his partner knows where his deepest fears and insecurities lie, most of which center on his old flame – Albright. Feisty, attractive, and bent on getting the story at all costs, Nancy is a whirlwind of sass and action, and as Parker’s former girlfriend, knows how to push all the right buttons. He’s hoping to rekindle the romance and she’s willing to test the waters, but both are driven in ways that constantly push their relationship to the brink.

With few leads to go on and little physical evidence, the elite investigative team relies heavily on the expertise of an FBI Behavioral Scientist, who steers them toward several possible solutions, but nothing, and no one, is ever as it first seems to be. With the whole of South Florida in a state of near panic and law enforcement’s best and brightest struggling to find answers, Marty quietly builds a radical theory, unlike anything ever seen before...