Catt Dahman

In 1974, a crime wave shakes a small town as children are murdered while camping with their scout troops or parents; a few were kidnapped. A young deputy, Virgil McLendon, is forced to lead an investigation into the brutal murders while a nation watches, wondering at his new techniques. No one has heard of profiling and few know how to read a crime scene. Eventually, these methods will shape the new Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI, but in 1974, they are thought to be strange. Virgil McLendon feels he is chasing ghosts as the killers kidnap young people, torture victims, leave a trail of dead campers, and seek to shock an entire town with the bloodshed and cruelty. As the body count rises, he feels the answers are close. Maybe far too close. Each act is more violent the last, and the serial killers decide to go after the local law enforcement department as well. It's a battle of brains, and nothing is as it seems. Of Blood and Water explores "nature vs. nature", family traditions, the beginnings of a new way to track criminals that will be called behavioral analysis, and the last of the innocence, as a nation changes. The face of justice will be turned aside, and vengeance may rule the case. The Oklahoma campground murders, a true crime case, adds reality as McLendon pushes self-doubt away, and chases the killers. The first in the Virgil McLendon series, Of Blood and Water, is where the deputy begins learning how to hunt criminals...and where he gains a taste for the chase.

It's sunny California and everyone is grooving to popular music In the land of free love. A serial killer is preying on military men and other tough guys, drugging them, mutilating, torturing them, and then killing them. The crime scenes are among the most brutal that law enforcement has ever seen, and yet, there are few clues left with the mangled corpses. The murders are in double figures, and the Sierra Vista sheriff's office, working with the FBI, call Virgil McLendon to come show them his weird system of "profiling" and of "reading crime scenes", because they have lost all hope of finding the clever, lucky killer. He is their last hope of stopping the massacre. As a large task force tries to find the killer, the killer taunts them. Virgil refuses to give up and as he examines each flimsy clue, and develops some strange theories, he and his team begin to develop a picture of the murderer. Unfortunately, the picture they have is a rough profile and doesn't give them a name or a way to find the cruel murderer. Only through a random clue found in an unlikely place, do they find a trail. As they close in, tables are turned, and the killer and the danger becomes personal. Just as a lion rips a lab's throat away, this killer, will play with his prey, and wait for just the right second to bite down. Can Virgil McLendon catch him in time? It'll be a race to the finish. Based on a true murderer in California, this fictional account delves into the question of what makes a serial killer, are profiles useful, and what dark evil lives at the base of a killer's soul. When pushed hard enough, any man may break.