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Rating: 
Summary: An in-your-face heroine
Review: Gross' up-front New York homicide detective Maggie Van Zandt, makes her debut in a novel brimming with the best and worst of New York humanity.Assigned a high-profile case - the murder of a young publishing assistant, Edie Severan, killed in her own bed - Maggie is distracted by the suicide of her dearest friend who had just discovered she was HIV positive. The reader knows, as Maggie does not, that there is a serial killer on the loose, a lab technician accidentally infected with HIV and so enraged he has determined to take as many low-risk people with him as possible - ostensibly to call attention to the disease. Meanwhile, Maggie's favorite suspect for the Severan killing is the high-society publisher, a rich, arrogant man who claims only the vaguest memory of his low level employee. The police hierarchy prefer another suspect, a black man with a motive who can be placed at the scene. Maggie, giving most of herself to her investigation and a bit to a budding romance, may just go along with her bosses for once, especially when, almost by chance, she hears something peculiar about the lab where her friend was tested. Gross handily builds the narrative, reaching several crescendos before pulling it all together in a protracted, edge-of-the-seat climax. Maggie's quirky personality is a welcome addition to the genre.
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