The Second Deadly Sin is the second installment in American author Lawrence Sanders's Deadly Sins series, translated into Chinese by Cai Fangu. When the story opens, Detective Edward Delaney has already resigned from the New York Police Department after the "Ice Axe Murder" case; he detests the power struggles at the top of the department, and since remarrying he would rather stay home and enjoy a quiet family life, treating the cases he solved as a thing of the past he can set aside. Soon, however, a murder finds him: in New York's Little Italy, a brilliant young painter at the height of his powers is found lying in a pool of blood in his studio. The autopsy concludes that the murder weapon may have been a single-edged blade five or six inches long; he was stabbed repeatedly and finally bled to death. Delaney's old friend and former superior, Igo Sothson, comes to ask for his help with the investigation. The New York police are unable to close the case, and this high-profile matter falls to Sothson, so Delaney steps in once more. This time his partner is precinct detective Abner Boone. Boone is diligent and highly capable, but has a serious drinking problem; he sees this case as his last chance to stay in the force. The pool of suspects spans nearly every level of New York's art world: shrewd dealers, smooth lawyers, glamorous society women, and neglected relatives. Each seemingly respectable person has his or her own reasons; and the common-sense rule that "the one with a motive is the most likely to have acted" may not apply directly to this case. Whether the truth lies in cold-blooded premeditation or a killing that spun out of control must be teased out by Delaney and Boone, bit by bit, from the gaps between desire and lies.
Baijia Publishing House is a publishing institution based in Shanghai, and its publishing direction can be glimpsed from the titles held in the library: its current list centers on science fiction, with the representative book Rong, and its authors include Rick Slater and Wang Yuerui. As far as publicly available information goes, only this one title by the house is currently on record, so its full publishing catalog and series arrangements are limited in public sources and difficult to describe in detail. Judging from the positioning of Rong, the house devotes attention to genre literature, especially science fiction narrative, and its collaborating authors span both domestic and overseas backgrounds, reflecting a cross-cultural approach to title selection. Overall, the publishing characteristics of Baijia Publishing House await further bibliographic material; the existing information can only sketch its initial profile in the science fiction segment.
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