"Evil isn't done by the choice of a rational mind; it's done by impulse"

When a teenage girl is found dead with her legs severed and missing, the aging Lieutenant Love expects to react to the scene with apathy. Instead, the corpse stirs emotions in him which he'd spent decades burying. Propelled by a need to understand these feelings further, he quickly links the murder to a sexploitation ring operating at a local high school. But as he interviews the girls involved and befriends their counsellor - a young man devoted to protecting them - memories from Love's own youth begin to resurface. Soon, the counsellor becomes a mirror of Love's lost idealism, and he finds his fixation on the girls he's investigating growing obsessive to the point of madness. As his mind slowly unravels and his friendship with the counsellor is tested, Love can only wonder if he's still sane enough to save the girls, or if his hunt for the killer will end up damning them all. Written as a homage to Italian giallo cinema, A Maid in Four Parts marries literary fiction with a pulp slasher murder mystery to explore the definitions of morality, justice and love in a world hellbent on muddying them.