When Sandor snatched little Joe from the path of a London Tube train, he was quick to make clear the terms of the rescue. "I saved your life," he told the homeless youngster, "so your life belongs to me now." Sandor began to tell him a fairy-tale: an aging prince, a kidnapped princess chained by one ankle, a missed rendezvous. But what did this mysterious story have to do with Sandor's preparations? Joe had only understood his own role: he was

A successful socialite's beautiful wife was raped and murdered in her own home — and Matt Scudder believes the victim's "grieving" husband was responsible for the outrage. But to prove it, the haunted p.i. must descend into the depths of New York's sex-for-sale underworld, where young lives are commodities to be bought, perverted...and destroyed.