Time bomb

A calm autumn day at a California schoolyard is interrupted by gunfire. No students are hurt, but the sniper is killed, and child psychologist Alex Delaware is asked to help the children who were there make sense of it.

The identity of the gunman proves to be a second jolt. Delaware, drawn to understanding what shaped such a disturbed mind, starts looking more closely at the shooter's life and discovers a web of hostility that reaches well beyond the campus, one that may already have cost innocent people their lives.