When two young women are murdered on the streets of New York, exactly one year apart, Detective Ellie Hatcher is called up for a special assignment on the homicide task force. The killer has left behind a clue connecting the two cases to FirstDate.com, a popular online dating service, and Flann McIlroy, an eccentric, publicity-seeking homicide detective, is convinced that only Ellie can help him pursue his terrifying theory: someone is using the lure of the internet and the promise of love to launch a killing spree against the women of New York City.

To catch the killer, Ellie must enter a high-tech world of stolen identities where no one is who they appear to be. And for her, the investigation quickly becomes personal. She fits the profile of the victims, and she knows firsthand what pursuing a sociopath can do to a cop - back home in Wichita, Kansas, her own father lost his life trying to catch a notorious serial murderer.

When the FirstDate killer begins to mimic the monster who destroyed her father, Ellie knows the game has become personal for him, too. Both hunter and prey, she knows her only choice is to find the killer before he claims his next victim - who could very well be Ellie herself.

A former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, Alafair Burke now teaches criminal law at Hofstra Law School and lives in New York City. She is the daughter of the acclaimed crime writer James Lee Burke. Her three novels in the Samantha Kincaid series, Judgment Calls, Missing Justice, and Close Case are available in paperback from St. Martin's Press. Dead Connection is her first stand-alone thriller.