When a pretty, red-haired, ex-military pilot is killed, the boys in blue blunder around for a few chapters before they unmask her secret life as a drug courier. By then the burglar who broke into Cass Ridley's apartment and stole the "tip" she got for her last run has already tried to spend one of the $100 bills from her stash, attracting the attention of the Secret Service. The "superbill" is phoney, and by the time Carella and his crew uncover the international counterfeit ring behind it, McBain has taken the action up a notch with a terrorist plot to bomb Clarendon (read Carnegie) Hall, where an eminent Israeli violinist is performing. There's also a conspiracy involving a publishing company whose sales reps are so venal and violent you might think they were the creation of a writer who blamed them when his last book failed to sell. Not so McBain, who can't have too many complaints in that department. His publisher's reps have been living well for decades on the commissions earned on McBain's books (including those of Evan Hunter, his alter ego).

That he has kept this series going for so long without tricking up the plots, turning his characters into stereotypes or sacrificing their humanity is a tribute to his authorial gifts: expert pacing, sharp-edged dialogue, authenticity, wit and confidence. There's only one thing getting old in this, his 51st book in an evergreen series: the fictional convention that locates the 87th in a place called Isola instead of midtown Manhattan, where it so clearly is set. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Cassandra Lee Ridley is an ex-airforce pilot who now scrapes a living flying low level contraband over the border to Mexico. But Cassandra has a taste for the better things in life and when she gets offered a $200,000 contract to fly what she assumes are drugs, she takes a deep breath and agrees to do it. The job goes perfectly, the deliveries are made and the money paid to the Mexican drug lords. One problem though. All $1.9 million dollars of the payment are fake - and printed in Teheran, of all places. The Mexicans soon want their money - and Cassandra is their first stop and first fatality. And when her naked body is thrown to the lions in a zoo in the 87th Precinct, New York, it becomes Detective Steve Carella's problem. Soon, the whole world has gone mad, the Mexicans are on the rampage, two beautiful blond girls are killing to their own agenda, a New York drugs dealer gets sucked in - and spat out - and even Arab terrorists make their own play... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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