A book in the Eve Dallas and husband Roarke (Novellas) series

Winter could be murderous. The slick streets and icy sidewalks broke bones and cracked skulls with gleeful regularity. Plummeting temperatures froze the blood and stopped the hearts of a select few every night in the frigid misery of Sidewalk City.

Even those lucky enough to have warm, cozy homes were trapped inside by the bitter winds and icy rains. In the first two weeks of January 2060 – post-holiday – bitch winter was a contributing factor to the sharp rise in domestic disturbance calls to the New York City Police and Security Department.

Even reasonably happy couples got twitchy when they were bound together long enough by the cold ropes of winter.

For Lieutenant Eve Dallas, double d’s weren’t on her plate. Unless some stir-crazy couple killed each other out of sheer boredom.

She was Homicide.

On this miserable, bone-chilling morning, she stood over the dead. It wasn’t the cold or the ice that had killed Radcliff C. Hopkins III. She couldn’t say, as yet, if the blue-tipped fingers of winter had been a contributing factor. But it was clear someone had put numerous nasty holes in Radcliff C.’s chest. And another, neatly centered on his wide forehead.

Beside her, Eve’s partner Detective Delia Peabody crouched for a closer look. „I’ve never seen these kinds of wounds before, outside of training vids.“

„I have. Once.“

It had been winter then, too, Eve remembered, when she’d stood over the first victim in a series of rape/murders. The gun ban had all but eliminated death by firearm, so gunshot wounds were rare. Not that people didn’t continue to kill each other habitually. But the remote violence and simplicity of a bullet into flesh and bone wasn’t often the method of choice these days.