<b><i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER - "Imaginative and fulfilling . . . an addictive contemporary crime procedural."--Michael Connelly, <i>The New York Times Book Review </i>(Editors' Choice)</b> <p/> <b>Caleb Carr, the author of <i>The Alienist</i> and <i>The Angel of Darkness, </i>returns with a contemporary, edge-of-your-seat thriller featuring the brilliant but unconventional criminal psychologist Dr. Trajan Jones.</b> <p/>In the small town of Surrender in upstate New York, Dr. Jones, a psychological profiler, and Dr. Michael Li, a trace evidence expert, teach online courses in profiling and forensic science from Jones's family farm. Once famed advisors to the New York City Police Department, Trajan and Li now work in exile, having made enemies of those in power. Protected only by farmhands and Jones's unusual "pet," the outcast pair is unexpectedly called in to consult on a disturbing case. <p/>In rural Burgoyne County, a pattern of strange deaths has emerged: adolescent boys and girls are found murdered in gruesome fashion. Senior law enforcement officials are quick to blame a serial killer, yet their efforts to apprehend this criminal are peculiarly ineffective. <p/>Jones and Li soon discover that the victims are all "throwaway children," a new state classification of young people who are neither orphans, runaways, nor homeless, but who are abandoned by their families and left to fend for themselves. Two of these throwaways, Lucas Kurtz and his older sister, Ambyr, cr