It should have been the night that launched a new pop idol. Tamar Valparaiso was set to launch her debut album, Bandersnatch, on a luxury yacht. But halfway through her performance, masked men dragged Tamar off the stage and took off, while the partygoers looked on helplessly.

Uptown Manhattan is where Olivia Kidd forces her brother Sarge to sell his beloved collection of paintings as ordered by their father, a Texas trillionaire. Downtown, Detective Reardon seeks for clues to the gunmen who have shot Ralph D'Annunzio dead in his restaurant. Robbery isn't the motive; there seems to be none, nor can Reardon make a connection between D'Annunzio and a second murder victim, a lawyer killed after leaving a stock broker's office....

A nun is murdered in New York City and an autopsy determines she had breast implants. Detectives Steve Carella and Artie Brown discover that Sister Mary Vincent led a double life.

This compelling story of death and retribution skillfully combines the day-to-day action of a pricinct station house with the tense drama of the search for the Deaf Man, a particularly abhorrent villain.

"He'd been a promising piano prodigy, once. Now he was just an addict, scraping to get by, letting his hunger for drugs consume him. But a man's life can always get worse - as Ray Stone discovers when he wakes up beside a beautiful nightclub singer only to find her dead... and 16 ounces of pure heroin missing."--Page 4 of cover.

Matthew Hope novel.

Detective Steve Carella and the officers of the 87th Precinct work together to solve a series of murders.

What with one thing and another, the 87th Precinct didn't need The Deaf Man. Especially since he'd already put in two previous appearances resulting in blackmail, murder and general havoc. But they had him -- or was it HE that had them? This time, The Deaf Man thinks it fitting that a police detective will help him rob a bank.

A baby is born at midnight on Christmas Eve in the 87th precinct police station.

Matthew Hope must find some missing film Prudence Markham had been editing, to clear her husband of her murder.