The Slaughter Man - Tony Parsons

Who would you like to see dead? Max Wolfe is back - the two-fisted homicide detective with a small daughter and dog waiting for him at home, and a crazed serial killer waiting for him out in the pitiless London city streets.

On New Year's Day a wealthy family is found slaughtered inside their exclusive gated community, their youngest child stolen away. The murder weapon - a gun for stunning cattle before they are butchered - leads Max Wolfe to a dusty corner of Scotland Yard's Black Museum devoted to a murderer who 30 years ago was known as The Slaughter Man.

But The Slaughter Man has done his time and is now old and dying. Can he really be back in the killing game? And was the murder of a happy family a mindless killing spree, a grotesque homage by a copycat killer - or a contract hit designed to frame a dying man?

Max needs to find the missing child and stop the killer before he destroys another innocent family - or finds his way to his own front door.

A murdered family. A dying serial killer. A missing child. And a detective who must learn that even the happiest of families have black, twisted secrets that someone is ready to kill for.