Purity

Every night on her London talk-radio show, ex-model Amy Watson hears the twisted morality of the masses; the perverted, the repressed, the bigoted and the bored – no one is beneath calling her. Whenever their idle chat spills over into something more threatening, Amy flicks a switch and laughs: 'You're history.'

A spate of murders in the sordid underbelly of the city has the phone lines buzzing. Two prostitutes, a pimp, a drug addict and a tramp have all been identically, meticulously strangled. But just as it seems a morally righteous serial killer is cleaning up the streets, an arson attack at a Camden hospice takes eleven patients to their deaths earlier than expected, alerting Detective Inspector David Grant to the chilling bond that unites every atrocity. Someone out there is not only very sick – through mercy or malice, they are killing the sick. And Amy is talking to him.

Or, at least the caller says she is. As Grant's investigation reveals nothing but his own paranoia, Amy finds herself connected to the heart of a terrifying evil. Is the voice that warns she is next to die just another late-night loser? Why does she dread the man who has become her neighbour and, so easily, her lover? Perhaps because of the ease with which the killer slips into the lives of his prey; his ability to sense illness wherever it lurks. When Amy discovers she may have contracted breast cancer, her darkest fears are realised. She is no longer protected by flicking a switch. She's history..

Shuttling with turbo-charged tension to its spellbinding climax, Purity depicts a disturbing reality where disease is an imperfection not to be tolerated – at any cost. It is a stunning display of Shaun Hutson's talent.