Synopsis 15

STOP! If you haven't yet read the query for Redemption, it's just below this synopsis. If you read the synopsis first, or even just a few words of it, you won't be able to play "Guess the Plot."

On the other hand, you'll get it right for a change.









SYNOPSIS [for Redemption]





Ian Templeton, psychologist and profiler, is on the track of a killer with a conscience. People who walked away from abuse charges are dying in horrible “accidents”: trapped in a flood, falling onto sharp railings. [When someone gets trapped in a flood, it's seldom suspected that a serial killer is behind it. I'd stick with the homicidal dishwasher for my example.] First Ian needs to convince his colleague, Detective Inspector Alex Willard, that there IS a case and not just a series of coincidences. Even when she is willing to go along with him, they have to work outside the official rules [You need a more . . . official-sounding . . . term than "official rules." Something like "department protocol." It's not a softball game.] to find their evidence. Just one problem: they can’t find any.

Ian struggles to understand this killer, so different from the ones he usually works with. The killer tells us stories giving us the insight into their mind and motivations that Ian is slowly uncovering. [Terrible sentence.] Some of the stories are eerily similar to the ones Ian painfully trades with convicted killers for the leads which help him find the buried bones of their earlier victims. The personal cost of these conversations is worth it: they bring closure to families, and, more importantly to Ian, a deeper understanding of what drives these warped minds. [I don't think you even need this paragraph. The next one follows the first one more logically, and I'm not clear on what you mean by the killer telling us stories. Are we in the killer's POV?]

With no forensic proof of a murderer Alex and Ian develop a plan to bring the killer into the open. A newspaper report on new evidence in one of the abuse cases frightens the killer: they killed too quickly; they might not have done the right thing. [That last clause is vague. Do you mean: Maybe the killer's victim wasn't an abuser.?] Then Ian’s conference speech on his belief that serial killers can be redeemed finalises the killer’s fixation on Ian as the one person who can truly understand them. The press attack Ian: “Police Profiler says ‘serial killers should be saved’!”—and Alex’s Chief throws him off the team. [Hmm, maybe it is a softball game.]

Ian discovers that the killer has not one, but two patterns: the deaths that are the “day job” of doing the right thing and another, more sinister, pattern of killing during sex for personal fulfilment. [sp.] Literally. Alex calls in a favour with another police division and bingo – they get [five in a row, including the free space.] a call-in on a sexual killing that just might give them a lead on their murderer. Alex’s team unofficially work on the scene while Ian sets up a face to face meeting with the killer at a black tie event. What he doesn’t realise is the killer wants this confrontation even more than he does. This killer knows they are losing control again, and has Ian in their sights as the source of their redemption. [These plural pronouns are confusing. It makes it sound like the cops are losing control. If the killer has been telling us stories, shouldn't we know it's a she by now?]

Then the team finally get some evidence: the DNA at the sexual killing shows a link to a convicted serial killer: Morten. But he is already in jail, and the DNA belongs to a female. Alex discovers Morten has a niece – whose parents both died in “accidents” when she was young. Alex’s breath catches when she recognises her photo: it’s the woman Ian has just left with. [Just left where with? I thought Ian and Alex were in two different places. Did they leave the black tie event together? Ian was supposed to be meeting the killer at the black tie event, so doesn't he know he's with the killer?] She races to find him before he becomes the killer’s next victim.

And Ian and the killer are starting to make love. [Ian knows the killer kills during sex, yet he hops into the sack with her right after meeting her? Does he know he's with the killer? If not, He goes to a black tie event to meet with the killer, and walks out to go have sex with a stranger even though his meeting with the killer hasn't happened yet? As that makes no sense, there's some confusion about the time line.]