New York policewoman, Kathleen Mallory, investigates the death of her adoptive father and other victims of a serial killer.

A magician dies while performing a trick on television and everyone assumes it was an accident, everyone except Kathleen Mallory of the New York police. She finds the motive in a crime involving magicians half a century earlier.

"Before Lisbeth Salander, there was Kathy Mallory. The astonishing new Mallory novel from the New York Times-bestselling author. The little girl appeared in Central Park: red-haired, blue-eyed, smiling, perfect-except for the blood on her shoulder. It fell from the sky, she said, while she was looking for her uncle, who turned into a tree. Poor child, people thought. And then they found the body in the tree. For Mallory, newly returned to the Special...

In New York a murdered woman is identified as Kathleen Mallory by a label inside her jacket. At that the real Mallory, a computer-literate sergeant in the New York police department who once owned the jacket, fires up her desktop and goes to work.