The Movie Murderer

The newspapers called him “The Movie Murderer”. Like “The Hillside Strangler” or “The Night Stalker”. You know what I mean. In L.A., every psycho gets a stage name. In this case, it started with a very smart detective who was, among other things, a film buff, like a lot of Angelenos. He saw something that no one else saw but his theory was not taken seriously. Because of that, one of his colleagues mentioned it to a reporter from The Times, late one night after a few too many drinks in a downtown bar in a neighborhood teetering between gentrification and homelessness. Until then, there were just a series of killings of girls no one would miss. But once the reporter wrapped his imagination around the concept, it became news. Somewhere in the hills of Hollywood, the killer opened his morning copy of the L.A. Times and smiled. He had begun for his own amusement, sure no one would get the joke. He had despaired of finding a worthy adversary, or any adversary at all. But he had underestimated. And so the game began. The pawn in the game is sexy, sassy Katie O'Hara. Caught up in a passionate affair with LAPD Detective Rick Sandler, Katie unwittingly becomes the object of a killer's desire.