A computer generated chain letter begins to circulate among carefully chosen people in Dale Falls, New York. The recipients are all emotionally disturbed...and this is no ordinary chain letter. Its rules are simple. Its results are grotesque. You kill for a stranger. Then a stranger kills for you. The consequences look like a string of accidents, or the work of a twisted serial killer acting alone. Slowly and horribly, the population of Dale Falls drops...one, by one, by one. And Paul Marnay, divorced father, amateur sleuth and target to die, is about to learn that a deadly chain is only as strong as its most demented link...the controlling link...the link known as the Chainmaster.