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 The Eighth Circle

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Alexander (Alex) O’Toole, America’s most famous forensic psychiatrist, is trying to keep his own semblance of sanity in a crazy world. He’s on the edge. To get his mind back in shape, Alex returns to the small town in rural Southern Maryland where he went to college to see old friends, drink beer, eat crabs, and think things out.

A college buddy, now a lieutenant on the small town police force, asks Alex to speak with a young man in prison for the brutal murder of a young woman. In the conversation, Alex discovers the young man is a practicing Satanist, and the murder was actually a human sacrifice.

Another brutal murder has been committed, but the killer, a 16-year-old girl, is acquitted and placed in the care of Dr. Elizabeth Perrine, a psychiatrist who performs pro bono work for the court system and the prison.

I admit it: I get attached to my characters. This is the second script with Doctor Alexander (Alex) O’Toole, America’s most famous forensic psychiatrist, working a case on his own turf, NYC. And it's personal.

In The Eighth Circle, a 15-year-old runaway is murdered—something that would not even raise an eyebrow on most New Yorkers—and it leaders to an evil presents in the city fueling teen addictions, child pornography and prostitution.
Seeking pure revenge, Alex lives on a razor-sharp edge as he takes the law into his own hands to rid the world of another depraved rat bastard.

Mark McGuire’s wife and daughter are mercilessly gunned down during a Mafia hit in Little Italy, NYC. When the police can’t help, Mark is drawn into a one-man vigilante campaign against the Triviano family. Aligning himself with a rival Chinese triad, McGuire’s life is consumed with one mission—to assassinate the people who killed his family.

Mark’s ability to evade the police, the FBI, and his underground enemies earns him the nickname Moon Shadow after an ancient Chinese warrior whose mystical powers transformed him into any image. It’s business as usual until Mark takes on the assignment of eliminating Paula Zenuti, a Mafia wife who unwittingly took possession of documents that could destroy Johnny Kong’s heroin dynasty.

Instead of killing Paula, Mark ends up kidnapping her...and later falling in love with her. Mark’s gradual emotional and moral reawakening is complicated by a $2 million reward that has all of New York hunting for him, not to mention Johnny Kong (Mark’s Chinese benefactor), the Mafia, the FBI, and the NYPD.

After Mary Shelly published Frankenstein in 1818, its title became a byword for a horror tale of a man-made monster. The scientist Frankenstein decided to create a man but instead forged a monstrosity who became a haunting terror destroying those nearest to the creator.

Dancing In The Shadows is a tragic drama that parallels the Frankenstein myth in presenting the effects of child abuse and neglect and how it destroys children, families, and, in the long run, all of us. Our society creates its own monsters, and they’re more terrifying than any we’ve seen in the history of world literature.

KC, the 15-year-old main character, is pushed beyond the limit, commits matricide, and is pursued by Detective Rogan of the Boston PD.

KC is representative of the army of conscienceless creatures our society produces. He symbolizes the runaways stealing food and living in alleys, the crack whores turning tricks for a few dollars, drug addicts mugging for a fix, and teenage assassins who have nothing left to lose. They’re all around us.