Hardcover with dust jacket

In her riveting sequel to On, Off, Colleen McCullough, the bestselling author of The Thorn Birds, proves once again that she is a master of suspense. 1967. The world teeters on the brink of nuclear holocaust as the Cold War persists. On a beautiful spring day in Holloman, Connecticut, twelve murders have taken place in one day, and chief of detectives Captain Carmine Delmonico is drawn into a gruesome web of secrets and lies. All the murders are different and seem unconnected. Are they dealing with one killer, or many? And as if twelve murders were not enough, Carmine soon finds himself pitted against the mysterious Ulysses, a spy giving local armanents company Cornucopias secrets to the Russians. As the overtaxed police force contends with small-town politics, academic rivalry and corporate greed, the death toll mounts, and Carmine and his team discover that the answers are not what they seem - but then, are they ever?

Carmine Delmonico returns in another riveting page-turner by international bestselling author Colleen McCullough. America in 1968 is in turmoil and the leafy Holloman suburb of Carew is being silently terrorized by a series of vicious and systematic rapes. When finally one victim finds the courage to speak out and go to the police, the rapist escalates to murder. For Captain Carmine Delmonico, it seems to be a case with no clues. And it comes as the Holloman Police Department is troubled: a lieutenant is out of his depth, a sergeant is out of control, and into this mix comes the beautiful, ruthlessly ambitious new trainee, Helen MacIntosh, daughter of the influential president of Chubb University. As the killer makes his plans, Carmine and his team must use every resource at their disposal—including a highly motivated neighborhood watch, the Gentlemen Walkers.

Internationally bestselling author Colleen McCullough presents a new novel in the thrilling, gritty series featuring Captain Carmine Delmonico, who must find a brilliant killer hiding out in the prestigious and cutthroat world of academia.Holloman, Connecticut, 1969. A lethal toxin, extracted from the blowfish, is stolen from a laboratory at Chubb University. It kills within minutes and leaves no trace behind, and worried biochemist Dr. Millie Hunter reports the theft at once to her father, Medical Examiner Dr. Patrick O'Donnell. Patrick's cousin Captain Carmine Delmonico is therefore quick off the mark when the bodies start to mount up. A sudden death at a dinner party followed by another at a gala black-tie event seem at first to be linked only by the poison and the presence of Dr. Jim Hunter, a scientist on the brink of greatness and husband to Millie. A black man married to a white woman, Dr. Jim has faced scandal and prejudice for most of his life, so what would cause him to risk it all now? Is he being framed for murder—and if so, by whom? Carmine and his detectives must follow the trail through the university town's crowd of eccentrics, no matter how close to home it may lead.

In the next installment in the “compelling, passionate, and gritty” ( Daily Mail, UK) suspense series, police Captain Carmine Delmonico is on the trail of not one but two killers. “Some men and women, she reflected, fell into their proper profession, the only one they were eminently crafted to do. And this man was one such. Highly intelligent without the spark of genius, well educated without being entrapped by his learning, nigh infinitely patient, rational to the core yet subtle, empathetic when it suited him, and endowed with an analytical brain. A policeman by nature who might successfully have done a dozen other things for a living, but had lit upon the one he was made for.” It’s August 1969, and police Captain Carmine Del­monico is away on a family vacation. Back at home, in the sleepy college town of Holloman, Connecticut, first one, then two anonymous male corpses turn up—emaciated and emasculated. After connecting the victims to four other bodies, Sergeant Delia Carstairs and Lieutenant Abe Goldberg realize that Holloman has a psychopathic killer on the loose. Luckily, Carmine’s beloved wife Desdemona sends him home from vacation early. Carmine’s team begins to circle a trio of eccentrics, who share family ties, painful memories, and a dark past. They readily admit to knowing all the victims, but their stories keep changing. It’s awkward that one of them is a new friend of Delia’s, a woman she recently befriended along with the respected and innovative head of the mental hospital, who has been rehabilitating one very difficult patient to be her trusted assistant. When another vicious murder rocks Holloman, Carmine realizes that two killers are at large with completely different modus operandi. Like Delia, he finds this case too close to home when he barely escapes being next on the body count. Sud­denly the summer isn’t so sleepy anymore. Colleen McCullough’s riveting Carmine Delmo­nico books take you back to a time when detectives relied mainly on logic, intelligence, and instinct—and a good home-cooked meal or breakfast at Malvolio’s with colleagues. Sins of the Flesh is her finest mystery yet, pitting her beloved hero against every cop’s nightmare scenario in a plot that turns on the science that McCullough herself knows so well.