Five-year-old Woody is dangerously, mortally ill. But his parents do not accept modern medicine and do not allow him to be saved. Psychologist Alex Delaware undertakes to convince them. It's too late - they stole the child from the hospital and disappeared into the darkness of the urban jungle. All that remains is a terrible bloody stain in a squalid motel room... To find Woody, who cannot survive without proper care, Alex and his friend, Detective Milo Sturgis, are forced to plunge into the underground world of sick fantasies and perverted sex, where dirty pleasures are paid for with anything, even the life of a little boy...The second Alex Delaware mystery which was first published in 1986. In this story the child psychologist tries to track down a child with leukaemia whose parents have run away with him, and traces him to a bizarre Californian cult.