Edgar-winning author L. R. Wright, often likened by the critics to Ruth Rendell and P. D. James, gives us an intricate and suspenseful novel of private lives and several kinds of thievery, set in magnificent British Columbia.Gordon Murphy has been searching for ten years - since his fortieth birthday - for the perfect woman. Four times he thought he had found her. Four times he was wrong. But this time, he knows he's right. The woman for him is Cassandra Mitchell. The fact that she is living happily with Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is irrelevant.Gordon Murphy is educated, attractive, and wealthy. He doesn't look crazy. But he is. He doesn't look dangerous. But he is. He doesn't look like a murderer. But he is.While Murphy is becoming obsessed with Cassandra, Alberg is preoccupied with other concerns: a murdered drug dealer; an elderly man demanding rent because he used to own the property on which the detachment of Mounties is situated; a woman cab driver whose crotchety neighbor is complaining ever more bitterly about the state of her ill-tended house and yard; an estranged young couple who are snatching their children back and forth from one another; and an epidemic of robberies. The mysterious thief steals people's belongings, but he seems also to have a voracious curiosity about the lives of his victims.Gordon Murphy is another kind of thief. He will do anything to possess Cassandra, as Alberg learns when the paths of his investigations begin to merge in one dangerous direction.A Touch of Panic is an extraordinary novel from one of the most gifted of contemporary crime writers. Read Less