ED MCBAIN

When a mans partner is killed hes supposed to do something about it. Maybe no one liked Del Gilbert, not the men he did business with, not the women who discovered his other lovers, not even his partner in the Gilbert and Blake literary agency - me. But when I found him shot to death on the floor of his office, I had no choice. I had to track down the person responsible. And not just to lay Del to rest, either. The office safe was open, and a contract worth millions was missing...

Hed been a promising piano prodigy, once. Now he was just an addict, scraping to get by, letting his hunger for drugs consume him. But a mans life can always get worse - as Ray Stone discovers when he wakes up beside a beautiful nightclub singer only to find her dead... and 16 ounces of pure heroin missing. On the run from the law, desperate to prove his innocence and find a killer, Ray also faces another foe, merciless and unforgiving: his growing craving for a fix...

LULLABY At New Year, a sinister song of death and destruction echoes through the 87th Precinct, and it isn''t Auld Lang Syne...VESPERS The cops of the 87th Precinct must cast the first stone in the bizarre case of a murdered priest - and a parish torn apart by the deadliest of sins. WIDOWS It''s summer in the city, and the brutal slaying of a lawyer and his mistress is heating up the 87th Precinct.

Detective Matt Cordell was happily married once, and gainfully employed, and sober. But that was before he caught his wife cheating on him with one of his operatives and took it out on the man with the butt end of a .45. Now Matt makes his home on the streets of New York and his only companions are the citys bartenders. But trouble still knows how to find him, and when Johnny Bridges shows up from the old neighborhood, begging for Matts help, Cordell finds himself drawn into a case full of beautiful women and bloody murder. Its just like the old days. Only this time, when the beatings come, he may wind up on the receiving end...

In this city, you have to pay attention. In this city, things are happening all the time, all over the place, and you don''t have to be a detective to smell evil in the wind. Take this week''s tabloids: the face of a dead girl is splashed across the front page. She was found sprawled near a park bench not seven blocks from the police station. Detectives Carella and Brown soon discover the girl has a most unusual past. Meanwhile, the late-night news tracks the exploits of The Cookie Boy, a professional thief who leaves his calling card -- a box of chocolate chip cookies -- at the scene of each score. And while the detectives of the 87th Precinct are investigating these cases, one of them is being stalked by the man who killed his father. Welcome to the Big Bad City.