'Happy fifty-third birthday, Doctor. Welcome to the first day of your death. You ruined my life. And now I fully intend to ruin yours.' Until the moment he reads those words, New York psychoanalyst Dr Frederick Starks has led a quiet and,so he believes, blameless life. But with them and the accompanying letter, his world is thrown into chaos. Suddenly he is plunged into a dizzying battle of wits designed by a man who calls himself Rumpelstiltskin. The rules: in two weeks Starks must guess his tormentor's identity and the source of his fury. If he succeeds, he goes free. If he fails, one by one, Rumpelstiltskin will destroy fifty-two of Dr. Starks's loved ones - friends, relatives, children - unless the good doctor agrees to kill himself. As the days tick by and the layers of Starks's carefully constructed life are stripped from him, he quickly finds himself a powerless pawn in a psychopath's deadly game of vengeance. . .