Joy Fielding: Missing Pieces (USA 1998)

From the Publisher:
How far will a mother go to protect her family from a madman?
An unrivaled master of psychological suspense, Joy Fielding has written her most chilling and intricate novel yet - a compulsively readable look at the razor-thin line between daily domesticity and nerve-shattering terror.

It had to end in blood. Family therapist Kate Sinclair, healer of lost souls, perfect wife and mother, has suddenly become trapped in a nightmare of her own. Her teenage daughter has just discovered sex, lies, and rebellion. Her ex-boyfriend has returned to threaten her marriage. Her once-peaceful hometown is being awakened by chilling headlines: Another woman is missing. Kate can sense the darkness gathering around her, can see the mistakes, the missteps, the missing pieces. She is afraid of what tomorrow will bring.

Enter Colin Friendly, a man on trial for abducting and killing thirteen women - the handsome, "misunderstood" sociopath Kate's troubled sister plans to marry. Colin loves women to death. He can't wait to see Kate and the girls again. One dark night when they are home alone, disarmed, ready for bed...

Joy Fielding: Missing Pieces. Island, ISBN: 0440222877 (May, 1998); 420 p., $7.99.

Joy Fielding: Missing Pieces (USA 1997)

From the Publisher:
Keenly observed psychological detail and breathtaking suspense combine to make this Joy Fielding's best novel yet, sure to appeal to fans and win new readers for the bestselling author of See Jane Run and Don't Cry Now.

Family therapist Kate Sinclair repairs other people's troubled lives, all the while reveling in her stable marriage and handsome home. But there are demons in her past that will not stay buried forever, and the carefully constructed edifice of her life comes tumbling down when her half-sister JoLynn announces her plans to marry Colin Friendly, a man on trial for the brutal murders of thirteen Palm Beach women.

Kate soon finds herself embroiled in a desperate struggle to protect her family from Colin's increasingly sinister advances. To make matters worse, her aging mother is losing her tenuous grip on reality and her rebellious daughter Sara is falling under JoLynn's wayward influence--a development that would worry Kate in the best of times, but which in this case might well prove deadly. As the strain begins to tear Kate's marriage apart, into the fray comes the smooth-talking Robert, her high-school crush, who soon displays an unhealthy interest in the results of Colin Friendly's trial.

As Kate Sinclair slowly slips across the razor-thin line separating ordinary life from unspeakable terror she realizes that there is no one she can trust, nowhere she can run... and no way she can deny that she and her loved ones may be the next targets of a demented serial killer.

Joy Fielding: Missing Pieces. A Novel. Doubleday, ISBN: 0385485212 (August, 1997), 368 p., $23.95.