描述
What a way to start a New Year: called out into a bone-chilling January night to investigate the murders of a lonely, arthritic, alcoholic old lady and her cat. As far as detectives Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes of the Eight-Seven can tell, she never had a chance to take off her ratty mink coat—or take the cheap booze she’d just bought out of the bag—before taking two slugs in the heart. She did have a chance to take a hundred grand and change out of the bank, however. But it’s gone like the winter wind, along with the shooter. Is it the same old tune about crime in the coldhearted city? Or perhaps a more complicated composition—like the ones the victim played in her heyday as a virtuoso pianist? Who’s to say? The lounge-singer? The cock-fighter? The fishmonger? The leg-breaker? The hits keep on coming—a suffocated hooker, a drowned dope dealer, a punctured pimp—so the 87th Precinct’s finest comb the streets without missing a beat.