MIDTOWN SOUTH by Christopher Newman

Finished Tu 7/9/19

This is an ancient paperback that I found on the shelf and there was no note about where I got it or if I had read it. I finished this novel while waiting for '2 MEN & A TRUCK' to remove the couch from downstairs; ($258!!!!).

This is a police procedural novel (his first novel) and concerns NYC detective, Joe Dante. I love this genre and I'll probably get more by Christopher Newman.

Joe Dante and his partner, huge black detective, Sam Scruggs (The Condor) have been working undercover narcotics. Joe Dante is disguised as a punk rocker. They end up in a shoot out where many bad guys are killed, so they are transferred to different units.

Dante is teamed with Rosa Rosario who is a very smart, highly educated detective. Her parents were murdered while she was a sophomore at Bennington College.

Dante lives in a beautiful rent controlled townhouse in Greenwich Village. Rosa lives in Park Slope with a roommate. 

A killer is murdering prostitutes in the mid-town south area of NYC. This is around the Empire State Building (8th and 39th st. ).

Brian Brennan is a local sculptor who witnesses one of the 'call-girl murders'. He saw the late model BMW with a dent on the side door. Dante becomes friends with this man. Brennan is divorcing a very rich woman, Lisa, and is hated by her family. He owns a summer home on the cape.


SUMMATION:

The killer is Stuart Sprague, a very rich and politically connected figure on the Manhattan scene.  He has been sexually fantasizing about his adopted daughter and this is why he is murdering call girls that look like his daughter.

He has an apartment in the mid town area that is full of sexual paraphernalia and crazed writing about his step daughter.

There is a huge confrontation at Brennan's summer home and the killer is blown up when Dante uses flares to light up gas tanks that the sculptor used for his art.

Dante is off the force to teach at the academy and Rosa and him fall in love.