Kill for Me, Kill for You

Amanda White's six-year-old daughter was abducted and murdered, and her husband took his own life soon after. She is certain the man responsible, Wallace Crone, walked free, and her attempt to take revenge on her own ends with a restraining order and a court order to attend a grief support group on the Upper West Side.

There she befriends Wendy, another parent whose child was killed by a man who was never punished. Over long, drunken conversations the two women hit on a pact: each will kill the man who destroyed the other's family, so that neither has an obvious motive for her own target.

Elsewhere in Manhattan, Ruth Gelman survives a violent home invasion and can give the police only a vague description of her attacker. She leans on her husband, Scott, while fear and paranoia take over her days. Detective Andrew Farrow is the thread between the two stories, and the overlaps between them grow as the book goes on.

This is a psychological thriller by Steve Cavanagh, built on the premise of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, with a fast pace, twists and a constant question of who can be trusted.