Rumpelstiltskin
by Ed McBain
Rumpelstiltskin. An old fairy tale. Straw spun into
gold, a dwarf with a wicked temper. A dwarf who covets
a child. A woman is found murdered, her daughter is
missing. Who is madman enough to kill the mother and
steal away the child?
Matthew Hope is a lawyer whose quiet style belies a caustic
wit and perceptive intelligence. He is thirty-seven,
divorced, and at loose ends with himself. Vicky Miller
is an appealing woman, a singer who made it big as
a rock star in the sixties and is trying desperately for
a comeback. For Hope it is a casual affair. He does not
heed Vicky's urgent plea to stay the night. He is
thinking of the morning, when Vicky's six-year-old
daughter will wake to find him there. But the next day
Vicky is found brutally murdered, and her little girl
is missing. The cops are on the case, but so is Hope,
determined to bring the killer to justice.
Why did Vicky draw up a will only weeks before her death,
a will that quite literally bequeaths her _child_? Who
will be the beneficiary of the massive fortune that
Vicky stood to inherit on her thirty-fifth birthday,
a birthday she died just short of? And whose was the voice
that called on the night she died -- leaving only the message
that he was coming to 'collect'? Matthew Hope and Morrie
Bloom, the kind-hearted but beleaguered cop on the case,
find themselves in a plot as terrifyingly familiar as the old
fairy tale -- a tale of gold and greed, of murder and mayhem.
Rumpelstiltskin
Series
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