The tabloids called him the 'Beast of East 16'. The authorities called him a dangerous sociopath. But one man called Frank Rattigan the only possible road to redemption. When Adrian Rawlings undertakes a series of interviews with an incarcerated killer, he cannot possibly realize that his encounters with the man who spent three days torturing, murdering then calmly dismembering a young air hostess 'for fun' in East London, will eat so deeply into his psychological neuroses and inadequacies. And as Rawlings struggles to find the vital threads to rationalize the horrifying crime, he finds himself drawn into a dark world of secret histories and hidden agendas which stretch far beyond the Beast himself. But perhaps the answers Rawlings strives for lie buried within his own childhood -- a place where vulnerable minds are always prey to the evil machinations of others...