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When I sat down to write The Third Rail, the only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted it to rock. No preliminaries. No preamble. No messing about. And then I thought of the L.

For those of you who have never been to Chicago, the L is an elevated train (hence the name "L") that winds through almost every neighborhood in the city. Its tracks snake down alleys and across back yards, often rumbling within a few feet of apartment buildings and offices. For about ten years, I rode the L every day into Chicago's Loop. I'd sit there, watch the scenery slide by and think: wow, if you really wanted to, it would be pretty easy to shoot someone from one of those buildings and get away with it. I don't know why I thought that, but there it was. And that was the beginning of The Third Rail.

The book opens from the viewpoint of the killer standing on an L platform. He scans the other people waiting for the train, picks out a woman and shoots her in the head. The murder is witnessed by Chicago PI Michael Kelly who gives chase only to be ambushed by the shooter in a nearby alley. Several more murders unfold in quick succession. The killer taunts police through the media. A task force investigates, but falls fatally behind the curve. Meanwhile, Kelly is drawn deeper and deeper into the case as he realizes the motive for the murders might lie in his own childhood .... and a fatal train ride he took more than thirty years ago.

The Third Rail is published by Bloomsbury