Robert K.Tanenbaum spent the first part of his career as an assistant district attorney in New York City's homicide bureau,and he has been artfully recapturing that period in his terrific books about D.A.Butch Karp and his wife,private detective Marlene Ciampi."He still had his hair at thirty-seven,and he kept it shorter than was fashionable then,at the start of the eighties," Tanenbaum writes of Butch at the start of Irresistible Impulse.It is one of the few places in the book where the exact time is spelled out;otherwise,Tanenbaum relies on an ambiance of attitudes and characters to root the action in its period.A tough Vietnamese immigrant who goes to work for Marlene's new detective agency is a fascinating creation,and the two main stories--Karp's difficulties with a high-profile case that could stir up racial strife,and Marlene's attempts to protect a prominent musician from a stalker--are perfectly set and brilliantly executed.

A killer who preys on the elderly lures Butch Karp, chief of Manhattan's Homicide Bureau, back into the courtroom for his most challenging trial yet.

A stalker who preys on the weak, the vulnerable, and the notorious sends private detective Marlene Ciampi down a violent road of vigilante justice.

In a city where a hair-trigger impulse can mean life or death, two wildly different cases are about to collide as Butch and Marlene suddenly find themselves hurtling down the same explosive path...

Irresistible Impulse is Robert K. Tanenbaum at his suspenseful, page-turning best.