"When I first encountered Walter Manstein, a distinguished-looking man in his late forties, he had just strangled his wife to death with the leash of her pet dog. He came into my orbit because he had been admitted to the prison mental hospital, of which I was the medical director, for a pre-trial psychiatric evaluation. As bizarre as his crime was, it was no more gruesome than the murders that had been committed by many of the other inmates and mental patients I had seen. But Walter was a prominent and respected member of society, a successful publisher in one of the largest cities in the state, the father of a daughter and the husband of a woman to whom he had been married for twenty years, and with whom, as he made clear, he had wanted to remain married - until the night of the murder. When I first met him, I found it almost impossible to understand why in God's name a person whose prior behavior gave every evidence of strong moral character and psychological stability, and who had so many advantages that it would seem he had everything to lose, would end his wife's life, ruin their daughter's life, and effectively end his own life as well?"--