For the first time, Joseph Wambaugh, turns his attention outside the Untied States to deal with two murders in neighboring English Midlands villages--ancient villages that still have whitewashed Tudor cottages, pavements too narrow for passing baby prams, streets barely wide enough for two cars, and churches or pubs as the sites of community life. What intrigues the master of true-crime writing is that out of the sleepy settings grew a landmark case: the first murders solved by genetic fingerprinting. The victims of the terrifying rape-murders--two fifteen-year-old girls who do not know each other--have in common one fatal mistake: they choose to walk village footpaths bordering the lands of a psychiatric hospital. Forever after, the names Ten Pound Lane and The Black Pad will evoke fear and dread. The murders occur three years apart, and during all those years the members of the Leicestershire constabulary never give up their search. The local newspapers cooperate by keeping the cases alive. And the families of the victims try to cope with the chaos of their existence. But the psycopath might never have been caught if a geneticist doing research on DNA at a nearby university had not stumbled upon a discovery: a procedure for mapping human genes--a method of establishing a genetic fingerprint, unique to its bearer, through a drop of blood.