Commandment

Bestselling author Lawrence Sanders breaks new ground with a story about a doctor who plays God - with horrifying results. Bingham Foundation field investigator Samuel Todd has been assigned to approve a grant to Dr. Telford Thorndecker, the current head of Crittenden Hall, a senior care facility. Thorndecker's wealthy first wife died in a drowning accident. The Nobel Prize–winning scientist is now married again, and his second wife is a gamine beauty four years younger than his daughter. Commanding and charismatic, Thorndecker is a man in his prime. But as Todd digs deeper into the goings-on at Crittenden Hall, he begins to question the very essence of the man. Is Thorndecker a brilliant scientist on the edge of a monumental breakthrough, or a madman who'll stop at nothing to achieve immortality? Todd must make his own Hobson's choice as he races to stop a conspiracy that could have calamitous consequences for years to come.

In this installment of Lawrence Sanders's acclaimed Commandment series, a law firm investigator goes up against a cunning adversary who uses religion for retribution Joshua Bigg, an investigator for a Manhattan law firm, usually spends his days tracking down witnesses and verifying clients' alibis. Ironically, Bigg is quite short, and uses his boyish looks to coax information from his targets. The newly promoted agent gets the chance to show his mettle when he probes the disappearance of one client and the suspicious suicide of another.     Professor Yale Stonehouse left his apartment one night, without saying anything to his wife, and never returned. Sol Kipper plunged to his death from the top floor of his Upper East Side townhouse. With little to go on, Bigg enlists the help of a cop, and uncovers a shocking connection between the two cases: a corrupt clergyman who preys on the lonely and bereaved. Desperate to stop the stone-cold killer who uses religion to mete out his own brand of justice, Bigg has to prove that no one is above God-or the law.

When a rare coin vanishes, an appraiser tries to clear her name - and exposes one family's lethal secrets. Appraising rare coins for Grandby & Sons, a venerable Madison Avenue auction house, is a dream come true for Mary Lou Bateson. She even gets a chance to inspect the Havistock Collection of priceless coins, which includes the Demaretion, a rare, ancient Greek silver piece. But when the Demaretion disappears just after her assessment, the young numismatist becomes the number-one suspect. Placed on indefinite leave, Bateson enlists the help of a New York Police Department cop and an insurance detective to go behind the closed doors of one of New York's most powerful and untouchable families. The Havistocks are keeping some dangerous secrets, including a kleptomaniac daughter, a sex-addicted daughter-in-law, and a sleazy nest of adultery, pornography, and damning secrets someone is willing to kill to keep.

Lawrence Sanders concludes his bestselling Commandment series with a sizzling tale of hot-blooded lust and stone-cold murder Nothing gets by Dora Conti. Her latest case brings the tough-as-nails claims adjuster to the mean streets of New York, where Lewis Starrett, a wealthy society jeweler, has been fatally stabbed. Though the killer was apparently an amateur, there was a lot of power behind the knife's thrust. The victim lived in an eighteen-room duplex on Fifth Avenue with his wife, daughter, son, and daughter-in-law. Conti must look into the lives of this privileged clan before deciding whether to pay out Lewis Starrett's life insurance policy. As it turns out, their family affairs are a seething viper's nest of lust, adultery, and escalating violence. The body count rises-along with Conti's growing desire for burnt-out cop John Wenden.