If you have a computer and a modem, you may have already opened the door...

Your life is in jeopardy. As you read this, you are within reach of a murderer.

So begins a macabre message posted on Verba -- an electronic bulletin board, a virtual meeting place where anyone with a computer and a modem can exchange views, flirt, or argue with complete anonymity. But an ingenious serial killer under the innocent-sounding name of Snowflake is using the vast potential of the Net to choose victims for a deadly "f2f" -- a face-to-face meeting.

Filmmaker Kate Lavin is one of the Verba subscribers who have attracted Snowflake's attention. But her concerns are pushed aside by work and her worries about her ex-husband, computer genius Ellis Holle. Then the first body appears, with a cryptic message to taunt investigators. Shortly after, another Verba subscriber dies.

The police have no clues -- and don't even yet know what connects the victims. It will take a mind as brilliant as the killer's, with as bold a disregard for convention and the law, to crack the warped code of a murderer's logic... before the rest of the names on the list -- including Kate's -- become names on homicide case files.

"f2f" is a taut and terrifying tale of random violence -- all the more compelling because it could be true.