This is more of a police procedural than a mystery. It combines excellent writing about police work with great insight into the mind of a serial killer who has gone off the deep end, and finds his impulses to kill are out of control. Most of the time the killer lives a relatively normal life and supports himself working as a cat burglar. However, for several years, once a year, he murders a young woman by ripping her abdomen open with a knife. He has escaped notice for the most part, by operating in several different police jurisdictions, but in the course of a burglary, he becomes obsessed with the woman of the house, and that causes him to escalate his crime wave, eventually leading to the end of his criminal career. This is a story that will kept me reading until well after bedtime more than once.