Chance is a dark story about psychiatric mystery, sexual obsession, fractured identities, and terrifyingly realistic violence; a tale told amid the back streets of California's Bay Area, far from the cleansing breezes of the ocean.
The antihero of this book, Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist, is a man primed for spectacular ruin. Into Dr. Chance's blighted life walks Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused, attractive wife of an Oakland homicide detective, a violent and jealous man. Jaclyn appears to be suffering from a dissociative identity disorder. In time, Chance will fall into bed with her; or is it with her alter ego, the voracious and volatile Jackie Black? The not-so-good doctor, despite his professional training, isn't quite sure and soon finds himself up against her husband, Raymond, a formidable and dangerous adversary.
Meanwhile, Chance also meets a young man named D, a self-styled, streetwise philosopher skilled in the art of the blade. It is around this trio of unique and dangerous individuals that long-guarded secrets begin to unravel, obsessions grow, and the doctor's carefully arranged life comes to the brink of implosion.