New York City is in a panic. A serial killer is targeting the city's conventioneers, throwing the tourist trade into a tailspin and sparking rumors of another "Son of Sam". The NYPD can't figure it out, so retired police detective Edward X. Delaney is pressed back into service to solve the case. The reader, however, knows from the first pages that the perpetrator is mousy Zoe Kohler, a lonely woman who suffers from a monstrous case of PMS along with the bizarre symptoms of a more obscure disorder. In alternating chapters the police hunt for the killer runs parallel with the narrative of Zoe's downward spiral.

The Third Deadly Sin was published in 1981, and the book definitely shows its age. Old-school chauvinist Delaney and his wife debate women's rights as if feminism were a surprising new idea. Zoe's physician chain-smokes cigars in his examining room ("More than once his nurse had plucked a lighted cigar from his fingers as he was about to start a rectal examination," p. 84). The depiction of an Asian character resorts to offensive stereotyping that would not be acceptable today.

Despite its datedness, however, the narrative is effective, especially in its final chapter. ( )

All his books are exciting reading ( )