The Belle Ridge Murders

Vigilante or psychopath, who is murdering men in Belle Ridge? Lita Anders, a New York journalist, leaves Manhattan with her five year old daughter and returns to her hometown, an old New Jersey suburb of Manhattan, where mansions meet Greenwich Village.

Impressed with her credentials as well as her legs, the playboy publisher of the Belle Ridge Call dispatches Lita to cover the murder of an Orthodox rabbi killed on the steps of his vandalized synagogue which catapults her into the murders of three other local men, an alcoholic truck driver, a gay actor, and a prominent attorney. The only link between the victims is the missing weapon, a Smith and Wesson 38.

Her initial investigation points to a gang of neo-Nazi college thugs that have hassled the actor and truck driver and are the likely synagogue vandals, but there is more to the string of murders than bigotry gone amok. Each of the victims was married and not one of the widows is grieving; not the Orthodox intellectual, not the cocktail waitress, not the famous actress nor the reclusive socialite. Have they been abused? Have they banded together and hired a hit man?

When Lita uncovers the unsolved murder of a member of a town planning board, shot with a Smith and Wesson 38, gun still missing, she is hunted by a vicious adversary but the link between all five murders continues to elude her.