After the suicide of his girlfriend, Gar Moody—a former FBI agent—has left law enforcement to become a Jungian therapist. He has a small counseling practice and is living in a poolside cabana in chic Santa Monica canyon, still grieving, but feeling much better.

Until someone starts kidnapping his patients.

One is murdered after her hair is lovingly washed. Another woman is returned alive, her hair parted on the wrong side of her head, and she seems to have a different personality. With no suspects, Moody has become a person of interest. He knows something must link these two patients. Reviewing his session notes, Moody discovers both women share an early childhood trauma that made them both prone to animus possession.

Meanwhile, a sexy, blond psychoanalyst who once treated Gar’s patients is following him. Someone keeps calling him up and breathing into the phone. And to make

matters worse, Moody keeps rubbing the Missing Persons detective the wrong way.

As the kidnappings escalate, Gar finds his cabana broken into. He gets a nice gash in his head, is himself kidnapped and ends up in the dark heart of South Central inside the dungeon of a very mean dominatrix—a lady big enough to play for the Raiders—who is bent on revenge.

When he starts to unravel what’s happening, Moody encounters a tale of corruption and murder that reaches from South Central to Malibu back to New York and back three years in time. He realizes he’s trying to catch someone who thinks he can remove a part of each victim’s persona. What Moody can’t figure out though is whether this violent individual is a man or a woman.

Animus rides the lure and presence of LA’s long, dark, and mythical detective tradition down a lonely, mind-bending road with many twists and turns.

Driving suspense. Breathless romance. A shattering conclusion. This is a book you’ll definitely want to read.