Carol O'Connell: Killing Critics (UK 2014)

From the Publisher:
Old ghosts rise up for maverick detective Kathy Mallory as an artist is dramatically murdered in the latest installement of Carol O'Connell's New York Times bestselling series.

Mallory Book 3: the third NYPD detective Kathy Mallory novel from New York Times bestseller Carol O'Connell, master of knife-edge suspense and intricate plotting.

Detective Kathy Mallory. New York's darkest. You only underestimate her once.

A deadly familiar crime.

An artist is murdered, in a stylish, surprising and deadly act of performance art. The murder almost goes unnoticed, but it reminds NYPD detective Kathy Mallory of an older, more brutal crime investigated years before by Mallory's now dead adoptive father.

A maverick cop with attitude.

As soon as Mallory starts to work on the new crime, old ghosts rise up, and the word comes down from on high to close her down, to shut her out the case.

What if her father had been right? What if the butcher was still out there?

But for Mallory, rules exist only to be shattered...

Carol O'Connell: Killing Critics. When art imitates death. A Mallory Novel. Headline, ISBN: 9781472212993 (October, 2014), 384 p., £8.99.

Carol O'Connell: Killing Critics (USA 2010)

From the Publisher:
NYPD sergeant Kathleen Mallory - computer genius, street fighter, provocative waif, peerless investigator, manipulative beauty - is the gorgeous, near-sociopathic heroine of this knife-edged suspense novel. Along with old pals, Ricker, Coffey, and faithful admirer Charles Butler, Mallory is determined to solve the brutal "art as death" murder of an untalented but highly touted artist-critic.

Mallory believes the case is the work of the same killer who, 12 years earlier, hacked a young artist and a talented ballerina to pieces. Baffling and intricate, Mallory wades through art critics, bag ladies, madmen and mafioso alike in getting to the bottom of these crimes. Secrets, very deep and very dark, emerge and strike closer and closer to home. By the end, she will come to know the truth - but the truth may be the most dangerous illusion of all.

Carol O'Connell: Killing Critics. Berkley Books, ISBN: 9780425238066 (May, 2010), 386 p., $7.99.

Carol O'Connell: Killing Critics (USA 1997)

From the Publisher:
NYPD sergeant Kathleen Mallory, a wild child turned policewoman, possessed of a ferocious intelligence and a unique inner compass of right and wrong, is about to be sorely tested. Killing Critics begins with a discreet murder - the almost unnoticed death of a hack artist at a gallery opening - but quickly connects with a much more brutal crime - a twelve-year-old double homicide and dismemberment originally investigated by Mallory's now deceased adoptive father, Louis Markowitz. A quick confession ended that case, but as Mallory probes into the new murder, the ghosts of the old will not be still. She finds herself traveling in an intricately connected world of envy, greed, and lethal passions: a place where no relationship is what it seems, and the secrets, very deep and very dark indeed, strike closer and closer to home. By the end, she will come to know the truth - but the truth may be the most dangerous illusion of all.

Carol O'Connell: Killing Critics. Jove Books, ISBN: 0515120863 (July, 1997), 388 p., $7.99.