The Third Deadly Sin

The Third Deadly Sin is the third installment in American author Lawrence Sanders's Deadly Sins series, continuing the investigative arc of retired NYPD Homicide detective Edward X. Delaney. The story unfolds among New York's hotels: several male guests are found murdered in succession, their ages, appearances, and professions wholly unconnected, yet all killed with their throats cut while naked, with multiple additional stab wounds to the genitals. The killer grows more vicious with each strike, and the press and police dub the perpetrator the "Hotel Ripper"; under public pressure, the NYPD calls in the retired Delaney to assist. Delaney distills clues from the killings: nothing is stolen from the scenes, the attacks are spaced roughly twenty-five to twenty-seven days apart, and the weapon is a small Swiss Army knife of the kind women commonly carry. A second thread follows Zoe Keller, an ordinary female employee in a hotel security department—nearly forty, divorced, taciturn, long plagued by menstrual pain, yet after each "night hunt" her agony miraculously subsides, fear and relief blending into a near-drunken calm. The killer's and the detective's perspectives advance in alternation; who it is, why, and which hotel will be next form the tightening suspense of the book. Throughout, Sanders sustains his cool, restrained narration, psychological depth, and procedural detail.