THE MAN WHO CAST TWO SHADOWS
By
The ultra-tough street kid who grew up to be Sgt. Kathleen Mallory has been suspended from the NYPD after shooting a suspect; she's gone into a consulting partnership with her friend, investigator Charles Butler; and she's been strangled a few blocks from her building -- at least according to the TV news. But Mallory's alive; it's only the label in her cashmere jacket, donated to a clothing drive, that has misidentified the dead woman as her. And following the trail of the jacket leads Mallory to late researcher Amanda Bosch, then settles her in an apartment in Amanda's building, long before anybody but the murderer realizes that Amanda's dead. As Mallory, who has the dead-eyed concentration of the men in perfume ads, plots to get the goods on the killer (wife-beating Judge Emery Heart? blind, recently widowed Pulitzer-winner Eric Franz? ""investment counselor"" Harry Kipling, sponging off his heiress wife?), Charles wrestles with an uncanny case of his own: an allegedly psychokinetic kid whose father has buried two wives and may just have plans for his terrified third. If you wondered about all the fuss that greeted Mallory's stunning debut (Mallory's Oracle, 1994), don't miss this chance to meet the strongest new detective of the decade in championship form.