...the FBI's expert on serial killers, is trying to quit the Bureau and escape his wrenching, uncanny ability to get into the mind of the monsters he hunts. But coded messages that arrive in the mail draw him into an interview at a Tennessee prison with a punk called Swann, who claims that his old cellmate, Cooper, a half-witted giant recently released from prison, has killed two girls in an abandoned mine-killed them very slowly. Swann offers to help capture Cooper in exchange for his own release. By the time that Cooper is recaptured after a violent spree, however, Becker is convinced...