A twisted and sexually charged thriller of extraordinary originality and page-turning suspense, THE GIRLS HE ADORED moves furiously from the inner recesses of the psyche to its startling climax. Jonathan Nasaw brilliantly portrays two equally intense characters -- a deviant killer and the expert who can unlock his darkest secrets -- and introduces one of the most likable sleuths in recent fiction.

For ten years, the charmingly disheveled veteran FBI Special Agent E.L. Pender has been investigating the apparently random disappearances of a dozen women across the country. The only detail the cases have in common is the strawberry blonde color of the victims' hair, and the presence of a mystery man with whom they were last seen. Then, in Monterey, California, a routine traffic stop erupts into a scene of horrific violence. The local police are stunned by a disemboweled strawberry blonde victim and an ingenious killer with multiple alternating personalities. Pender is convinced he has found his man, but before he can prove it, the suspect stages a cunning jailbreak and abducts his court-appointed psychiatrist, Irene Cogan. In a house of horrors on a secluded ridge in Oregon, Irene must navigate through the minefield of her captor's various egos -- male and female, brilliant and naive, murderous and passive -- all of whom are dominated by Max, a seductive killer who views her as both his prisoner and his salvation. Irene knows that to survive she must play along with Max's game of sexual perversion. Only then will she be able to strip back the layers to discover a chilling story of a shattered young boy -- and all the girls he adored.

Booklist:
FBI agent E. L. Pender is on a mission to track down Casey, a serial killer with a penchant for strawberry blondes. After years of fruitless detecting, Pender gets a break when Casey kills his latest victim and assaults a police officer during a routine traffic stop in Northern California. Psychologist Irene Cogan, an expert on multiple-personality disorder, is brought in to see if Casey is fit to stand trial. He presents a challenging case: he's not only aware of all his personalities, he has carefully nurtured and coordinated them. Casey escapes from jail and kidnaps Cogan as his next victim, leading Pender on one final, bloody chase. Nasaw has created a terrifying character in Casey, but his real success is in illustrating the interaction of three obsessive characters. Pender cannot adapt to the FBI's culture any more than Casey can adapt to society at large. And Dr. Cogan, scarred by the sudden death of her husband, is trapped in a tiny world circumscribed by her workaholic behavior. An entertaining thriller.

Publishers Weekly:
The homage to Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs is perhaps a bit too heavy-handed, but readers should get their bloodmoney's worth out of this twisted tale of a serial killer with a taste for strawberry blondes. "The system of identities known collectively as Ulysses Christopher Maxwell Jr." contains: a mnemonics expert, a petulant child, an extremely seductive young man, a demonic killer and a frighteningly smart front man named Max. It was Max who was finally arrested in California's Monterey County, sitting next to the recently disemboweled body of a young woman, during a routine traffic stop. Dr. Irene Cogan, an expert in what is now called DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) because "multiple personality disorder" got a bad name, finds Max a real challengeDand just a bit of a turn-on. For veteran FBI agent E.L. Pender, two years away from mandatory retirement and once voted the worst-dressed agent in the bureau, Max might mean the end of a one-man crusade to convince the world that all those strawberry blondes who mysteriously disappeared over the last 10 years were the victims of a serial killer Pender calls Casey, after the old song "And the Band Played On." When Max uses his Lecter-like skills to break out of jail and kidnap Dr. Cogan, Pender trails them to a horrific farm called Scorned Ridge in Oregon. Thanks largely to Nasaw's sharp writing, familiarity breeds not contempt but interest in how it all comes out.

Amazon:

In Casey/Max, Nasaw's crafted a true monstrosity; in Irene, a masterful adversary; in E.L. Pender, a cop as fine and likable as any you've met in some time. And he's wrapped them in a story like none you've lately read. --Michael Hudson