"The attractive redhead at the A&P checkout counter opens her checkbook and begins writing a check, unaware that she's signing her own death warrant. The man behind her in the dark overcoat memorizes the address on her check. When she leaves the A&P, he follows her home. In the next few weeks he tracks her every move - and when she rebuffs his advances, he stabs her. Five women, chosen at random, fall victim to a man the press dubs the Hyena. The NYPD has no leads until young Babette Watson walks into homicide detective Max Segal's office. She tells him she's had disturbing visions of all the crimes before they happened. Dubious, Max takes a chance in believing the pretty psychic, and it isn't long before they're on the Hyena's trail. But the Hyena knows they're tracking him, and it won't be long before he strikes." -- Back cover

Why would a nurse's aide terrified of heights hurl herself from a twentieth story rooftop in Queens? Why would an attractive librarian with a water phobia be found naked and floating facedown in the Astoria Park swimming pool? How did the scantily clad body of a young bookstore clerk with a horror of snakes end up inside a Central Park Zoo cage with a two-hundred-pound python? NYPD Detective Max Segal, strung out from a devastating divorce, is determined to find the killer before more women die. A sadistic ex-con who masquerades as a shrink is seducing phobic women into psychic hell and literally scaring them to death. When Max Segal picks up the killer's trail, Max's new girlfriend is chosen to become victim number four. Like Love Kills and Exes , Dan Greenburg's previous bestselling thrillers, Fear Itself is a terrifyingly realistic, darkly humorous, startlingly sexy, street-tough page-turner with a surprising climax.