Special 30th Anniversary Edition featuring a new foreword from the author. Novice reporter Kate Murray is determined to make a career for herself covering crime for a New York City tabloid. But after she botches a big murder story– writing that the victim was a Harvard-bound undergraduate instead of a notorious crack dealer– her bosses give her six months to redeem herself. Kate scrutinizes the police activity reports on a Sunday morning, searching among the Saturday-night homicides for a victim the public will care about. She finds one. Margaret Severing, a hard-working nurse, is inexplicably shot to death in the lobby of her building in Bushwick, and Kate is determined to beat everyone– including the cops– to the story. Her investigation leads her to two men. Detective John Finn, who has just had a close scrape with death, decides that Kate is his last chance at love. Dominick Donatti, a brooding psychopath and the only witness to the nurse's murder, sees Kate as his ticket out of the neighborhood.