Synopsis: In her hey-day, ex FBI agent, Brigid Quinn, not only worked serial killer cases but became their prize. Small and blond, from a distance she looked vulnerable and slight… the perfect bait to catch a killer. But as Quinn got older, she realised she needed to find a protégé, a younger field agent to take her place. So Quinn trains a twenty-two year old and lets her loose in the field. The plan works. Until the Route 66 killer not only takes the bait, but kills the bait. Years on, Quinn is trying to move past the fact that she has a young woman’s death on her conscience. She’s now the perfect Stepford Wife – until she gets a knock on her door. The girl’s body has finally been discovered. Quinn is pulled back into the case and the more she learns about the killer the more she comes to believe, despite the overwhelming forensic evidence to hand, that they have the wrong man.

Becky Masterman

The Judges said: “Lethally skilled in the art of self-defence, ex-FBI agent Brigid Quinn is a heroine-in-peril forced back into the horrors of her old life. Characterisation and pace ensure a criminally engrossing and assured edge-of-the-seat debut thriller exploring the well-furrowed path of the FBI behavioural science unit pitted against the serial killer, but with a freshness of plot that makes the reader sit-up to attention.”

Becky Masterman spends her days working in a forensic science publishing house and her nights writing “stylish, exhilarating thrillers”. Rage Against the Dying is her debut novel. Becky lives and works in Tucson, Arizona.