ISBN 0-575-04820-4 (UK pbk, 1991)

"In a future where casual barbarism and criminality are rife, the kidnapping of a doctor and his two daughters in the desert seems hardly exceptional -- except that the kidnappers seem hardly human.

"Victims themselves of a 'close encounter', the desperate abductors have become infected with an alien virus so insidious and deadly that they have become exiled from their own race. The compulsion to spread the infection is fierce -- to resist it is sheer mental torment -- but to submit means to surrender ones humanity, and be ruled by an insatiable physical hunger, unhindered by morality or restraint.

"The tension between the kidnapper and the kidnapped is stretched to breaking point as the virus threatens to overwhelm not only them, but the whole of humanity, body and soul." [jacket blurb, UK pbk, 1991]

Spare and sure... even in moments of great tension she never loses control over her pacing or her sense of story." -- (in Washington Post ).