Ed McBain concocts a brilliant and intricate thriller about a master criminal who haunts the city with cryptic passages from Shakespeare, directing the detectives of the 87th Precinct to a future crime — if only they can figure out what he means.
The 87th Precinct gets a visit from one of the city's most accomplished criminals — a thief known as the Deaf Man. Because he might be deaf. Or he might not. So little is known about...

It should have been the night that launched a new pop idol. Tamar Valparaiso is young and beautiful, with the body and voice of an angel. The stage is set for her to launch her debut album, Bandersnatch, on a luxury yacht in the heart of the city. But halfway through her performance, masked men drag Tamar off the stage and into a waiting speedboat, while the partygoers look on helplessly. Detective Steve Carella is just showing up for the graveyard...

"Murders happen every day in the big bad city. They're not such a big deal, even when the victim is a well-known city councilman. But this is the first tim Fat Ollie Weeks has written a novel. It follows a cunning detective named Olivia Wesley Watts, who, apart from being female and slim, is rather like Fat Ollie. While Ollie is responding to the squeal about the dead councilman, his leather dispatch case is stolen from the back of his car ... and...