“This is your case,” the manual advised, “stick with the investigation.” Stick with it in the pouring rain where a man lay with his open skull seeping his brains onto the sidewalk, stick with it in a hospital room reeking of antiseptic, stick with it in a tenement apartment at two in the morning, the clock throwing minutes into the empty hours of the night while a woman wept tears for her man who was dead. Search her closet for the clothing the killer wore. Get her to talk about her husband’s possible infidelities. Be a cop. Being a cop was something Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct knew a lot about. He knew about the careful, painstaking work of tracking down leads that could mean nothing or everything. He knew that cops like continuity even if it takes a couple of corpses to provide it and that right now he and his partner Meyer Meyer had all the continuity they could handle. They had two corpses shot within four hours of each other on the same rainy Friday night with the same .38 Smith & Wesson — one a calypso singer from Trinidad who had just finished a gig the other a hooker named C. J. who had just turned her last trick. Carella knew they had a case that was growing as cold as a slab in the morgue. He knew that they had a killer loose in the city who had killed once, twice, and perhaps would kill again if he and Meyer didn’t follow the leads, didn’t stick with the case, didn’t get there first... With this breathtakingly suspenseful novel Ed McBain shows us what the police procedural novel is all about. Whether you’re one of the millions of faithful followers of the 87th Precinct or a fan-to-be, from the first terse page of Calypso to an ending that will frighten you out of your skin, you’ll know you are in the hands of a master