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- The Murder Room
- The Murder Room
Fiction, Crime & mystery, Classic crime
Gripping US crime fiction from one of the first female recruits to the NYPD.
Detective Christie Opara arrests a man on the subway for indecent exposure. Within hours, Murray Rogoff, a burly giant, is out on bail. Soon after, the body of a young dancer is found stashed behind the stairway of a Bronx apartment building. The girl was brutally raped and strangled, and a clue links her with two previous murders. The killer takes a signature trophy: a hacked-off lock of the victim's hair.
When Christie starts to get strange, late-night phone calls her instincts tell her that Rogoff's the serial killer they're hunting. With the reluctant approval of her boss, Assistant District Attorney Casey Reardon, Christie prepares to become the bait of a deadly psychopath.
Dorothy Uhnak
A native New Yorker, born and raised in the Bronx, Dorothy Uhnak (1930-2006) attended the City College of New York and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice before becoming one of the New York Police Departments first female recruits in 1953. She wrote a memoir detailing her experiences, Police Woman, before creating the semi-autobiographical character of Christie Opara, who features in The Bait, The Witness and The Ledger. Opara is the only woman on the District Attoney's Special Investigations Squad, and applies the same cool, methodical approach to hunting down criminals as she does to raising a child on her own and navigating complex relationships with her colleagues. During her 14 years in the NYPD Uhnak was promoted three times and twice awarded medals for services 'above and beyond'; she also earned the department's highest commendation, the Outstanding Police Duty Bar. Her writing was equally highly regarded: The Bait was widely praised by critics, and won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery of 1968. Dorothy Uhnak died in Greenport, New York, and is survived by her daughter Tracy.
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