The Hog Murders (1979)

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In the Edgar award-winning first title of the Niccolo Benedetti series, the celebrated detective hunts a serial killer who is terrorizing a small town. In the upstate New York town of Sparta, six people die in three weeks. At first the incidents seem accidental: A highway sign drops onto a car full of teenage girls, an old man falls down a set of stairs, and a boy is struck by a sheet of ice that had been building on his garage. But after each case a note turns up. Someone called 'Hog' claims responsibility for each death, and taunts the police to catch him before he strikes again. The deaths have everybody talking, and the local police department is eventually forced to share the case with famous Italian detective Niccolo Benedetti and his protégé, would-be cop turned private investigator Ron Gresham. A painter, ladies' man, and rule-bending genius, Benedetti views every case as a chance to probe the nature of evil. And with his 'analyze and