Intent to Harm

He stalks his prey with playful cruelty, taunting intended victims with subtle violations of their homes--possessions just slightly out of place, closed doors left ajar, locked windows mysteriously opened.  Striking and vanishing with uncanny stealth and skill, he leaves behind no conclusive traces--except the awful degradations that he inflicts on a growing string of carefully selected women.  As ripples of panic and anger spread across the college town, the police department is up against the greatest single challenge to its informal credo: "protect the weak, nail jerks."

It had never crossed Toby Parkman's mind to be a cop.  After college, he joined a tiny publishing house; he and his lawyer wife, Sara, had a good liberal distrust for uniforms.  Then Toby's job disappeared, right around the same time his friend Walt's bookstore went belly-up.  Full of noble intentions--and not unmindful of the healthy starting salary--they signed up together.

Now, seasoned but still idealistic, Toby jumps at the chance to join the manhunt for the rapist.  The spade work is grueling--comparing sets of fingerprints; checking the alibis of innocent repairment and taxi drivers--but even harder are the interviews with victims of earlier, unsolved cases: imploring women to reiterate the details of a horror they can never forget.  After a long day in Sex Crimes, it is not easy for Toby to enjoy the simple embraces of Sara and their two children..not easy to back off when their best friend, Melanie, brushes away his concerns over her flimsy window locks and lack of draperies.

The attacks become increasingly vicious, and Toby must leave Sara unprotected until late each night, both of them keenly aware that their home is square in the rapist's favored territory.  An ambitious television reporter briefly makes the manhunt a cause ce`le`bre, but when the rapist continues to elude capture, radicals in the liberal town question the police department's commitment to protecting women.  None of the women has seen the rapist's face--but finally, a likely suspect begins to emerge.

When, after weeks of painstaking surveillance, the dragnet begins to close on the shadowy predator, excitement and tension run high.  But a carefully laid trap backfires at the eleventh hour, and Toby is caught in the fallout--forced to confront the limits of the law, and to weigh the cost of stepping over them.

This used book is in very good condition.