Amir and Serena, naturalized Americans, lost their only child, Lelah, in a mass shooting at her campus. A sad ne'er-do-well living nearby killed seventeen people before being killed in turn.
Serena turned to her closest friends and tried to recover and resume her life. But recovery eluded Amir. He identified Lelah's body for the police and nearly fainted. Thereafter he could see Lelah as a child - from memories and from scenes which were only imagined. He began to see that child throughout his waking hours. Yet he could no longer see Lelah as an adult, as she was on the day she was killed.
His hallucinations progressed. Amir began to hear a voice in his head. The voice was that of an animal, a growl that evolved into the roar of a predator, a scream of dominance and rage.
Then the voice, which Amir named "The Beast," began to speak to him. The voice was enraged, greedy, aggressive, insatiable. It wanted one thing only - revenge on the "gun people" whom it held responsible for Lelah's death.
Amir resisted at first. Most people would. But ultimately, he had no choice. It was obey or die. Amir would try to save his life with Serena. From there on, he would wallow in blood and struggle to preserve what had not yet been lost.
The policeman who investigated the campus shooting, an Inspector Roundtree, was also assigned to investigate Amir's murders. Over time, through persistence, courage, and thought, Roundtree became convinced that Amir was a serial killer. But for perfectly sensible reasons, he was unable to convince others.
At this point, let us say only, as an Amazon reviewer did: this story does not have a Hollywood ending.