Liz Sansborough thought she had left her past behind forever. A former CIA field agent as well as the daughter of perhaps the most notorious Cold War assassin, the man known to the world only as The Carnivore, Liz is now a university professor in Southern California specializing in the psychology of violence. But her dead father's legacy has come back to overtake Liz.

Someone, somewhere is claiming to have possession of the Carnivore's secret files and is using the information contained within them to blackmail prominent world figures to promote some secret agenda. Files that Liz swore her father never kept. First Liz herself is attacked and almost killed, then Liz's cousin Sarah Walker is kidnapped in Paris and her husband, CIA agent Asher Flores, is gravely wounded. The only ransom the kidnappers will accept is the Carnivore's files. Now if Liz is to save Sarah, she must somehow resurrect her old tradecraft skills and, in a desperate hunt across two continents, locate the files and uncover a dark and dangerous conspiracy linked to a shadowy group known only as the Coil.

With her bestselling thriller Masquerade, Gayle Lynds earned her reputation as one of the most exciting new writers of international suspense. Now with The Coil, the sequel to Masquerade, Gayle Lynds is at the very top of her form, proving herself one of the finest writers in the field today.