The butcher's boy : a novel
(Book)

Murder has been easy for the butcher's boy until now: It's what he was raised to do. But when he kills the senior senator from Colorado and arrives in Las Vegas to pick up his fee, he learns that he has become a liability to his shadowy employers. His actions attract the attention of specialists in police agencies who watch the world of organized crime. All notice that something big is going on, but only Elizabeth Waring, a bright young analyst in the Justice Department, works her way closer and closer to the truth, and to the frightening man behind it.

Edgar Award winner, best first novel, 1983.