Ends Meat

The first case was a barn full of pigs, ripped to shreds by an unknown force. On that day, Detective Inspector Hopkins stepped out of the slick carnage in the barn and onto the path of a quest that would lead him to other grisly scenes scattered all over South Yorkshire. Four years. No breaks. No answers. Then the killings become more frequent. A wanderer on a backroad, teenage vandals, the local reverend, a hungry reporter-all of them chewed to bits in less than a week's time. What's more, this time the scenes are yielding up clues, and they're all pointing Hopkins in one unlikely direction: the Outpost, a run-down movie house on the outskirts of town. Indeed, the Outpost's proprietor, Tom Doyle, knows far more than he's letting on to the authorities. He knows all about the animal force that can contort a man's body and turn him from a decent fellow just trying to make ends meet into a vicious predator driven only by the hunger for fresh meat. But there's so much that Tom doesn't know, truths that threaten to tear apart his family, topple the world he has built, and bring all his secrets to light.