By the time Thomas Barragan was an eight-year-old boy, his mother had instilled within him the emotional foundations of the daughter she would have preferred. Now as an adult and a Reverend, his female instincts have consumed him. As Chamelea, a "liberator of souls," Thomas has developed his talent as a hypnotist and his calling as a man of God to secure the trust of his female victims. With the aid of LSD-laced Communion wafers, he hypnotizes his subjects into committing suicide. As they die in his embrace, he absorbs their souls to satisfy his compulsion to be a woman. It is his inner god's will for him. The nascent forensic techniques available during the early 1960's, which were used to track Chamelea's killing path, were a long way from what they have now become. Murders were investigated through old-fashioned sleuthing and the gumshoe intuitions of police Lt. Marty Cohansen and his former partner, Private Detective Raymond Nealy. "Chamelea" is also the story of the dysfunctional relationship between the Reverend and his estranged twenty-year-old daughter, Regina. A number of cultural events meander through the background of the story, including the unofficial beginning of the Vietnam War; AM radio music; the rise of The Beatles; the Ford Mustang and the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. "Chamelea" is a harsh and absorbing yet heart-wrenching and provocative story.