Shadow Man is supposed to be the story of a serial killer who was horribly abused as a child and the efforts of the police to track him down and keep him from killing others. However, the book is really about Ben Wade. Ben Wade is one of the detectives on the case and while the victims of the serial killer affect him greatly and he gives his all to catch him, it is the apparent suicide of a young teenager that really shakes up his world. Much more than just a search for a killer, Shadow Man is about others living in the shadows of what happened in the past. The novel is set in the 1980s in a small one time ranching community near LA, and the beautifully described scenery and small town feeling make the setting a character on its own. Shadow Man could be called a thriller but it is really much more than that, with characters that are so real you can feel their pain.