Rumpelstiltskin by Ed McBain (1981)

Rumpelstiltskin
by Ed McBain
Publisher:  The Viking Press
Copyright:  1981
Book Club Edition

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 kindhearted 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.

Condition:  Used.  Hardcover.  Dust cover is lightly discolored and shows shelf wear, and scuffing. Pages may be tanning from age.  Previous owner's "Library Of" stamp is on the front endpaper.

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